This Lifetime and the Next
by Gandalf3213
Summary: What if every epic bromance throughout history was just the same two guys, trying to get back to each other? Or: Dan and Phil have to go through a lot of shit just to be roommates in London.
1. 1160 AD

_We've been waiting for each other to wake up recently so we can have breakfast at the same time while watching an anime. It's quite a good system! We've gone through quite a few. **Dan, 2014**_

.***.

Dan peeked over the edge of the log, rolling his eyes at Phil, who was still across the path, trying to mate with a hawk. "Will you be serious? They'll be here any second!"

"You said that ages ago."

"Well, they'll shoot you if they see you. And I swear I'll laugh."

Phil pouted and darted across the street, jumping over the log to join Dan on the ground. "I don't want to rob to the rich to give to the poor," Phil muttered, morosely. "I want to just be rich. And get a cat."

"Robin will love that," Dan snorted, and then imitated what was probably supposed to be Phil's voice. "'Um, Mr Robin Hood? I have a new business proposition. Let's forget about this whole solving corruption thing and just get a load of cats instead.'"

Phil blinked at him. "I don't sound like that."

"You really, really do."

Phil sighed, leaning back against the log and picking at a thread in his pants. "I'm hungry," he said, mostly for show. They'd eaten the day before, a pigeon Phil had killed. He'd had a bit of a cry over that. Not that it was his first kill. He just always seemed to cry whenever something died. Dan called him a sensitive soul.

Dan pulled a mint leaf from his pocket and handed it over.

"Thanks," Phil muttered, nibbling the edge of the leaf. He kept his eyes on the road, where any second now (or so Dan said) a caravan would be coming around. And they'd do their thing, get the gold, get away, give it to people more deserving. It wasn't a bad life, and he believed in Robin, but he was here mostly because Dan was much, much braver that Phil was, and needed some looking after.

"I'm thinking about leaving the Merry Men," Phil said, lightly. Conversationally.

"Oh yeah? In favor of cats?"

"I'm serious. It's...I mean, it's good and all, but this isn't much of a life."

"Phil," Dan said, his tone not quite serious but getting there. "We help people every day. That's kind of our thing."

Instead of responding to this, Phil stripped the mint from the stem and gave a piece to a passing chipmunk. "Do you remember when Little John was hurt?"

Dan shuddered, and nodded. Little John had led a raiding party on one of the bigger caravan trains, and had caught an arrow in the hip. It was already infected by the time five men were able to drag him to camp, sweating and swearing.

"Do you remember Robin?" Phil asked, his tone still determinedly light.

"He was distraught." Dan had never seen anything like it. Their usually calm, funny leader snapping like a mad dog, hands over John's wound like he could stop the bleeding by willing it. Dan had found himself praying that John would live, not only because he liked the big bear of a man but because he'd known, in that moment, that Robin wouldn't be the same without his right hand man.

And still, Dan didn't know what Phil was getting at until his friend turned to him, eyes suddenly soft and serious, the smirk that usually lived in the corner of his mouth gone. "Danny, you're so reckless."

When they were young, they'd call each other Danny and Philly. Both orphaned street rats, Dan was the thief of the pair, while Phil was more apt to work for wages. Dan was better at finding hiding places in the nooks and crevices of castles, while Phil was better at hunting, trapping, and starting fires. They'd been a pair for years and years, and Dan had long since taken Phil for granted. He was just there, constant and soothing as a sunrise.

"Oh," Dan said. He couldn't think of anything else.

"Yeah," said Phil, looking at him for the first time since the conversation began. "I...I still believe in the cause, Dan, you know that. I believe that Robin and John and...and all of us are making the world a better place. But I had you before I had the Merry Men, and I plan to have you after."

"Damn," Dan said, "we do need to find some girls."

Phil poked Dan hard in the side. "Even if a girl is crazy enough to fall for you, she'll be stuck with me. Someone has to keep you out of trouble."

Phil rarely pulled the I'm-older-than-you-so-I-know-better card, but Dan could see it coming. He didn't need it. The Merry Men had taken them in when they were still wiry teenagers, half-starved and half-wild. They'd been a good home, but with the archers accompanying every caravan nowadays, with hardened take-no-prisoners soldiers back from the War, ready to kill on sight...it just wasn't worth it anymore. Dan was getting tired.

And, suddenly, he longed for those days when they were young and beholden only to each other, camping whenever and wherever they wanted, talking about girls they'd seen in the market, about men they admired, making up stories about the stars. Phil used to tame birds to hunt for him. Dan used to whistle wherever they walked.

"If you want to say," Phil said, quietly. "I understand."

Dan did have friends in the Merry Men. Nothing like Phil, of course, but a good bunch of guys all the same. And yet..."Aw, hell Philly," Dan said, poking Phil back, "You know you're stuck with me."

"For this lifetime and the next," Phil said, a sentence they used to repeat often as children.

Dan grinned, and looked down. So he missed the caravan, rounding the corner. Missed the marksman, an unusually vigilant ex-soldier with unusually good aim, running stealthily in the vangaurd.

But he didn't miss the gasp, as Phil had all the breath knocked out of his body. And Phil fell forward; slowly, inexorably, horribly downwards, mouth open as if surprised that death would come even for him. And isn't every young man surprised? To find that death wasn't just a shadow lurking, but a beast waiting to pounce. And even if you're young and vital, and in love with life. Even if you're sensitive, and clever, and too nice for a life of thievery. Even if you have a best friend, a younger brother who you love with a desperate kind of a fear...death comes anyway, an arrow to the heart.

Dan reached out his hands and Phil landed, heavy and already dying in his arms. "Sh," Dan said inanely, pushing back Phil's hair as the older man gasped in his arms, a fish with no water. "Sh, it'll be alright." There was blood everywhere. Dan forced his lips upwards. "This lifetime and the next, right?"

There was blood dribbling from the corner of Phil's lip, and Dan brushed it away with his thumb. At the same moment, the unusually good marksman had nocked his next arrow, was breathing in, breathing out.

It was surprisingly painless, death. Especially when your hands were wrapped around your best friend's body.

Dan opened his eyes, just a crack. All sound had left the world. He could feel nothing. There was just the sight of Phil, and the sharp stench of blood sweeping over the woods.

He and Phil locked eyes. They were both bleeding. And Phil smiled - actually smiled - and, just barely, raised one hand, wiggles his fingers like a wave. As if this wasn't goodbye, as if it was just sleep, and on the other side they would see each other again.

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

 **Half of me hates myself for posting RPF (because it's creepy. It can't help but be creepy.) But the other half of me thinks this might be kind of hilarious.**


	2. 1801 AD

AmazingPhil: I have been hiccuping for 7 hours. Should I call the ambulance?

danisnotonfire: omg i can hear you through the wall go lock yourself in the toilet

 **2015** _  
_

 _.***._

The boy who found Alexander Hamilton on the street had the an upright and pressed look about him, and for a long bleary second Hamilton couldn't place the sharp features, the bright eyes. And then it swam into view: Daniel Theodosia Burr had the same looks, the same expressions, the same way of holding himself as his father.

"What can I do for you?" Hamilton said, wearily. He'd heard about Burr's desire to run for President against Jefferson and assumed that he had his son out campaigning for him.

"Hello, sir. I am -"

"I know who you are."

"I'm Daniel Burr," the boy continued. "You can call me - I mean, your son called me - I go by Dan."

"I've known you since the day you were born, Dan," Hamilton said, wearily. "Since you were the size of a breadbox. You and my son," he still choked on the word, and the world became misty and moist, "were the same age."

"I know," Dan sighed. "I just wanted to say I...I knew Phil. He was my best friend."

The moisture was suddenly gone from Hamilton's eyes, replaced by a burning anger so hot it turned the grey sky red. He slammed the young man against a nearby brick building with all the strength of the soldier he used to be. "What kind of game is Burr playing?" he seethed, and though the boy was a giant, looming several inches above him, Hamilton shook him as if he were a rag doll. "To claim his son and mine could ever be friends?"

A long-fingered hand gripped his wrist. "I know," young Burr, Dan, continued to speak quietly, as if afraid of disturbing the air between them. "I know he never told you. But I knew your son and I'm...I couldn't be sorrier that he died." He choked, not from Hamilton's grip on his neck, from somewhere deeper. "It's unimaginable."

Hamilton slowly backed up a step, straightening his clothes. Only now did he think to glance over his shoulder - but no, it was too quiet uptown to have onlookers. This incident, at least, would not make the papers.

And still the boy spoke. He was fine-limbed, like his father, but a generation softer. "I wanted to find you, to let you know, if you didn't know...that Phil loved you. He admired you. I've never known a son so devoted to his father. And his siblings," Dan ran a distracted hand through his curiously straight hair, laughing softly. "I used to be so jealous, whenever Phil talked about Alex and James and Eliza."

"He was gentle with them," Hamilton remembered.

"He was gentle," Dan agreed. "And good."

"And now he's gone," Hamilton's voice twisted into something strange and sad.

Unexpectedly, Dan smiled, putting his hands in his pockets and staring at the sky. "I never thought that people could just die. I like to think I'll see Phil again. Someplace new. We always said," he rubbed the back of his neck, looking embarrassed, "we always said that we'd be friends in this lifetime, and the next. He died entirely too young, sir. I'm sure I'll find Phil again."

Alexander Hamilton watched as the young man's fists clenched, as his mouth pressed into a thin line.

"Yeah," Dan said, "I'll find him again. I have to."

.***.

Two years before Dan found one of the most powerful men in the country walking brokenly along the side of the road, he sat under a tree at King's College, pretending to read. And Phil sat next to him.

They knew each other, of course. Their fathers had the most notorious rivalry in the government, and yet were often invited to the same parties, the same events, their families left for hours or days as they tried to piece together a government. Dan had watched Phillip Hamilton from afar. They were the only two giants in the New World, sprouting over six feet tall. Once in a while Phil's mother made them stand next to each other, back-to-back, to see whose hair sprouted above the other's.

"Hey," Phil had said, that first day when the sun was shining. "Just because our fathers are enemies doesn't mean we have to be."

And that was all it took. Well, that and a disastrous first weekend away from home, when they'd tried to bake.

"I just want some fresh bread," Phil said, peering into the oven they'd commandeered. "My mum used to make it every Sunday. Hot out of the oven, with fresh butter."

"Jesus Christ," Dan rolled his eyes from where he sat on the counter. "Do you want me to leave you and the bread alone?"

Phil laughed, prodding at the bread with a finger. It was squishy and sticky and wrong. He figured another ten minutes would do. "You have fresh bread at home?"

"Um," Dan said, almost smiling, "No, I prefer to transfer my affections to, you know. Girls."

And he didn't have a mother to wake up early on Sundays, kneading until flour flew like a cloud around her. He didn't have a mother, just an ambitious and often-absent father, and the unspoken knowledge rose like a wall between them.

And then Phil smiled, poking Dan in the side, "This will be your first fresh bread, then."

It was Dan's turn to peak inside the oven, to pull a face. "It's flat."

"It's avant-garde!" Phil protested.

"What does that even mean?"

"I have no idea."

.***.

"What are you doing this summer?" Dan asked at the end of the year as they packed their clothes into their cases, Phil folding his blues and yellows, Dan balling up his suits. Black, one after another. Black and black and black. _Like my soul,_ Dan joked, often, and Phil would tell him that his soul was honey-colored. Pink, even. _I'll dye all your suits pink._ And Dan, laughing, _don't you dare._

They'd moved into the same room after Phil's first roommate, a bouncy French boy, was pulled out due to _problems back home_ and after Dan's roommate turned out to be a psychopath. Dan brought all of his things to Phil's half-empty room halfway through October. "He lit his bed on fire," Dan had said, flopping onto the empty four-poster, the one by the window. And Phil had said, "then live here." They were spending all their time together, anyway. Phil encouraging Dan to continue with his law studies, Dan encouraging Phil to go out and live a little. They were a good pair, and by June they were close as family.

"We'll probably go upstate," Phil said, grabbing another colorful vest. "There's a lake that we go to every summer. My aunt Angelica comes over from England, and my father comes up when he can. It's nice. Quiet, but nice."

"Sounds brilliant," Dan said, and though his words were enthusiastic his tone was hollow.

It made Phil pause, "And what about you?"

Dan was staring out their small window, watching a group of the younger boys kick a ball around. He stared for so long that Phil thought he hadn't heard the question, and was about to repeat it when Dan said, "I just got a letter."

He reached over his bed into the end table, fished it out, handed it over to Phil. "It's from my father," Dan said, fidgeting. "He doesn't want me to come home."

It was eloquently written. Aaron Burr was campaigning hard, was gone often, and so had rented out their house in the city. Sorry for not telling you sooner, Daniel. Make arrangements at the college to stay on for the summer. I'll visit when I can.

Which explained why Dan wasn't doing much packing. "You're staying here?" Phil asked, looking around their stuffy little room. It got hot during the day and cold at night. It was a dodgy excuse for a home.

"I have to," Dan said, picking a thread out of his quilt. "I have no where else to go."

"Come with me," Phil said, immediately. "There's plenty of room upstate, and Alex will be gone - Dad bought him a commission - so you can have his bed." Phil grinned, nodding to himself. "This is great! I usually only have a bunch of girls. And now I'll have you."

That got Dan smiling, though he was already shaking his head. "Even if I didn't tell my father, someone would. And he'd disown me if I went to a Hamilton household."

"Oh," Phil said, "right." He shook his head, balled a hand into a fist and banged it rhythmically against his own thigh. "My dad wouldn't be too happy to have a Burr in his house, either."

"So," Dan said, looking around their room, which was looking dingier by the moment. "I guess I'm staying here."

Phil looked at him, and then began to take his shirts out of the suitcase, the blues and purples of his life, putting them back into the small closet. "Well," he said, "if you're going to stay here, than so am I."

Dan's smile widened for a split second, and then frowned. "But your family..."

"I'll write my father now," Phil said, sitting down, grabbing quill and ink. "Say I'm taking a summer class. He'll like that. He doesn't think I'm too serious about school."

"You're the most dedicated student I know," Dan said, fiercely. "A hundred times better than me."

"Still," Phil said, "Can't hurt to have another semester under our belts, can it? You register for classes yet?"

"Um. No."

"Well, then we can take something fun," Phil, still digging around in his suitcase as he unpacked, threw something across the room. It hit Dan in the head, and only when it was up close did Dan realize it was a little lion, probably made by one of Phil's sisters. "Eliza sent that to me," Phil explained when Dan just looked at it. "But I'm willing to sacrifice it to you."

"Really?" Dan said, poking its little mane.

"Well, for a night."

Dan poked it and, unexpectedly, felt hot tears pricking the corner of his eyes. "Thanks, Philly," Dan said, putting the stuffed animal on top of his quilt and brushing the back of his hand over his eyes.

"Oh, Dan," Phil said, "you're welcome."

.***.

Dan was Phil's second at his duel. He remembered Phil pointing to the sky, Phil who had never been able to hurt anything, not even the bugs that crawled into their room. A sensitive soul, a kind man, a gentle giant. He pointed his gun at the sky and then...

For the rest of his life Dan would remember the shot ringing out. For the rest of his life, Dan would try to piece the rest of it together. How had he gotten to Phil's side? How did he hold his friend, with the blood spilling out of him, more precious than precious gems?

Dan had spent fifteen long and lonely years without a best friend. And after Phil died, Dan had and became and did many good and great things, but he never had a best friend again.

.***.

Dan didn't say any of this to Alexander Hamilton, of course. He couldn't find the words to explain why Phil had been keeping their friendship a secret, or sentences to describe about the summer they'd spent together last year, taking only one class, stripping down to their underclothes to dive into every stream within walking distance, baking badly in abandoned kitchens.

He wondered how much Hamilton would understand, anyway, this serious and quiet older man. Dan's own father, on one strange and memorable night years before, had said that everyone who'd ever loved him had died. _Not me,_ Dan had replied, and Aaron Burr just smiled, and faced the fire. There had been men in wars, Dan knew, who had mattered to his father as much as family. Did Hamilton have those men? To laugh with on summer evenings, when everything else seemed to be going wrong.

"He was so young," Hamilton said, again.

"If it's within my power, sir," Dan stood upright, toweringly tall, "I will find Phil again."

Hamilton's eyes shone as they turned on him. "If it's within your power," Hamilton said. "I think you will."

 **.**

 **.**

 **this is actually the chapter we wrote first. thank you, so, so much, to everyone who's reviewed so far.**


	3. 1912 AD

**Phil:** "You're remembering me because I died."

 **Dan:** *bursts out laughing* "Why am I laughing?"

 **Phil:** "Why am I always dying?"

 **Dan:** "Please guys. Stop killing Phil in your fiction! Okay? It's my turn!"

 **2015**

.***.

Phil twitched nervously outside his door, unable to concentrate on the book he'd brought out with him. He glanced over his shoulder once, twice, again. There was a giggle from inside the locked room, the low laugh of his brother. Phil rolled his eyes, pretending not to hear.

"Excuse me, sir. Did you ring for tea?"

Phil jumped at the sound—he'd had one job, one, to guard the room as his brother wooed the panties off some fellow trust-fund heir. And he couldn't even do that right, if this dark-haired service boy was interrupting them.

"Um, no," Phil said, trying to usher the boy away from the door. "Um, thanks though? Maybe, if we…"

There was an untimely squeal from within the room, and then a moan, and Phil thought he'd never turned redder in his whole life. "You should forget you saw that," Phil began, trying to find the imperious, condescending tone his father used whenever talking to servants. His voice came out in a squeal instead.

"Well, I didn't see anything, did I?" The servant boy said, smirking.

"You—you know what I mean. Just forget about this."

"Noted," Dan said, though he still stood next to the door, smiling wider as something squeaked. And squeaked. And squeaked. "So, were you exiled so your friend could have improper relations?"

"Brother," Phil muttered, sticking his hands in his pockets and examining the servant boy from under his bangs. "And you're treading a dangerous line."

"What, for a servant?" The boy stuck out a hand, and Phil was too kind not to shake it. "You can call me Dan," he lowered his voice conspiratorially. "I'm not really a servant you know. I'm actually a spy for the King."

Phil laughed, and forgot about everything else. How ships always made him violently ill. How he was here, on the Titanic, because he and his brother were supposed to make Good Matches With High Born American Women. Phil knew he was lucky—lucky to be in a first-class cabin on his way to an enormous house in Boston. But sometimes when he thought of his immediate future, of the coming-out balls he'd attend, the dinners with various lovely, vapid girls, the financial meetings, he wanted to crawl out of his skin, try on the disguise of a different life.

Instead of saying any of that, though, he just said, "Hi Dan. I'm Phil."

They were still shaking hands in the narrow hallway, which was one of Phil's favorite places on the ship. If he couldn't see the ocean, he could pretend he was at home, in London, safe and bored.

"You know," Dan said when they finally stopped shaking and were just standing there, awkwardly. "I'll get in trouble if I bring back a full tea tray. You want to do me a favor and take it for me?"

"Only if you have time to sit down," Phil blurted out, impetuously. He bit his tongue as Dan raised an eyebrow at him. "I mean," Phil stuttered, "well, I've already been ditched by my brother, haven't I? I need some company."

Phil let them into his parents' rooms, and Dan fussed about the settings for several long minutes, pouring the tea, arranging the napkins just so. Phil found himself talking to fill up the silence, about why he was going to America, and the long-eared rabbit he was leaving behind, and his apprehensions about the ship. "And you can sit down," he said at the end of the speech, when it seemed like Dan would remain standing forever. "I've never had tea with a spy for the King before."

Dan's smile was slow and dazzling, and he sat on one of the spindly chairs carefully, as if afraid to mess up the wood itself. "You know, I've been to America."

"Really?"

Dan nodded, "I've been doing this journey for eight months now. Not on the Titanic, of course—maiden voyage and all—but I've been trying to decide, you know. About whether to get off in New York or London."

"But you're originally from London?" Phil questioned.

"Did my super posh accent not give me away?" Dan asked, enunciating every syllable. It had given him away. If he hadn't been dressed in the whites of the ship's staff, Phil would have assumed Dan was a minor lordling, like himself. "Yeah, I'm from England. But you can't stay in one place your whole life, can you? I've seen France—Spain—Morocco."

"Sounds wonderful."

Dan grinned. "It really is."

And then it was Dan's turn to talk and talk, avoiding the tea ("how can you drink it piping hot?" he asked Phil, aghast.) He talked about growing up in Camden, the eldest of two boys, poor but happy and smart enough to realize his shockingly young parents couldn't afford to feed four mouths. So he'd left when he was thirteen, working in shops, at first, and then at restaurants and clubs.

Phil blushed deeply at the mention of clubs and Dan looked confused, and then grinned. "Not those kinds of clubs," he admonished gently. "I was young, not stupid. I made my way to Manchester, and eventually a ship was short-handed, and I volunteered. I've been traveling since I was sixteen."

"You sound like you really love it," Phil noticed.

"I really, really do." Dan gestured around the room, large and elegantly furnished and screaming of money. "I mean, it's no first-class ticket. I never went to school or anything. But…"

"But who cares," Phil cut him off, "when you get to see the world?"

The door flung open and quick as lightning Dan was on his feet, gaze pointed to the floor. Phil rolled his eyes as his brother stalked into the room.

"You had one job!" Martyn raged, throwing something at Phil that turned out to be a pair of nylons. "Watch the door! And instead I find you in here with-" Martyn really looked at Dan for the first time, and whistled appreciatively. "Well, not as pretty as my tumble, but I guess he'd do in a pinch."

Phil didn't miss the way Dan's fists clenched. Phil knew that his brother was joking, but Dan had no such knowledge and must be deeply uncomfortable, not to mention worried at being found in a first-class room. "Lay off," Phil snapped. "Dan was keeping me company, since you threw me over for the first pretty face you saw."

"Company? Is that what the kids are calling it nowadays?"

Phil was on his feet, and stepped swiftly in front of Dan. "Just go. I'll see you at dinner."

Behind him, he heard Dan mutter, "my hero."

At least his brother went easily, with a shrug and a wink and a "see you around, Danny-Boy," he was gone.

Phil turned. "I'm so, so sorry. I didn't even know he had a key!"

"Just so you know," Dan said, "You defending me makes me look even more like your lady-love than if you'd said nothing."

"I couldn't stand the way he was talking to you," Phil stuck his hands deep in his pockets. "You know he's—he's a nice enough guy, for a brother. He wouldn't really…"

"I know," Dan said. "He doesn't seem the type."

Lurking in that sentence were so many stories that Phil wanted to hear. And he had so many he wanted to tell, about the little corner of the world he knew. He wanted to hold up his jigsaw piece and match it up to Dan's, see if the two of them could complete a picture. It wasn't that he hadn't had friends before—he had a dozen friends, sons of his parents, boys he would stand in the corner with, trying to muster up the courage to ask one of the gossamer, giggling girls to dance. But at the end of the party they always scattered, and Phil never minded.

Dan tugged something in him. Like a tune he'd heard long ago and was now on the tip of his tongue. Like a memory.

But he was a lord's son and Dan was wearing all white, and shiny shoes, so when the moment stretched long and awkward, Dan said he should go, and Phil said, "Yeah. Yeah, okay."

.***.

The Titanic was a gigantic ship (of course it was, it was right in the name!) and yet…and yet Phil kept running into Dan. From that first afternoon, he saw Dan at dinner, and gave a wave, and Dan winked. And then on the way down to breakfast, there was Dan, folding holding a tray of morning drinks. And later in the morning, there was Dan, seemingly doing nothing on deck but giving people directions.

He smirked when Phil came up to him. "I didn't expect to see you up here."

"What gave it away?" Phil asked, looking down at his forearms, which were exposed in his shirt sleeves and utterly pasty.

"Well, you said yesterday you were afraid of the water," Dan nodded at the side of the ship, "And this happens to be very deep, incredibly cold water."

"The room's boring," Phil said, "I brought a book, and that's boring. And then I tried to sleep, which was even more boring." He gave Dan his most winning smile. "If I order tea this afternoon, can you bring it?"

"You'll be the talk of the ship, inviting a serving boy to your room two days in a row," Dan pointed out.

"Let them talk. You're saving me from the abyss of boredom."

.***.

That night, Phil and Dan snuck above deck late at night. It felt clandestine, the salty air, the tumbling stars, and after several minutes of very ungentlemanly whooping and hollering they both collapsed on their backs, breathing deeply. Dan was still snuffling with laughter where the lay, and Phil felt that familiar tug again, as if they'd done all this before.

"Phil?" Dan said after a long minute.

"Yeah?"

"Can we go inside now?"

"Is racing around on a slippery deck not all the fun you'd dreamed it would be?

Dan propped himself up on his elbows, and Phil saw him as a blacker shadow against the black of night. "Well," he said slowly, "as awesome as this is, I—oh, damn, this is embarrassing."

"What?"

"I'm afraid of the dark."

.***.

That was the exchange Phil remembered several nights later, when he was stumbling around a crowded and chaotic deck. Martyn, his parents, were all accounted for, his father soothing his mother, sending her along in a life boat it's okay, we're right behind you. Phil, rotating on the spot, several inches taller than the crowd and looking, looking for the boy he'd spent the last four days getting to know.

I'm afraid of the dark, Dan had said, and laughed, it was almost funny, but his voice had hitched at the end and the boys had gone inside and spent their other evenings in well-lit places, playing cards, sneaking into third-class dance parties, talking.

"I have to go," Phil told Martyn.

"No—wait, we need to stay here!" His brother shouted, but Phil was already pushing through the crowds, gone.

He found one young-looking, white-suited man, holding the door open as people streamed out. "Do you know where the other crew members are?" Phil shouted over the noise of hundreds of scared and screaming people.

The boy shook his head, the whites of his eyes blazing in the dark. At first Phil thought he was saying, "no," but when he leaned closer, he realized the word was "who?"

"Who?" Phil repeated. "He's—he's called Dan." In all their hours together, he'd never gotten a last name. "Dan…something." A blast of cold wind, and the ship tilted alarmingly. Phil shouted, inanely, "He's as tall as I am!"

"He should be here!" the boy shouted back. "Above deck! I saw him helping people out!"

And Phil ran. Past a boat of women, which was being upset by one pretty red-haired girl. Past the band, playing on with the resolution and beauty of men knowing they were already dead. The people parted in front of him, and he got lost in the crowd, and there were so many people, skirts dragged on the wet decking, jackets discarded, arms and hair everywhere, makeup off. "Dan!" Phil shouted.

And then there he was. Still dressed in his whites, somehow alone, the eye of a storm. Phil clapped him on the shoulder and he turned, and they both breathed out. It would be okay now. "We need to get on a boat!" Phil shouted.

Dan smiled sadly. He plucked at his white shirt. "Crew goes last."

Phil absorbed those words. And then began tugging off his jacket, yanking at his tie.

"Phil, this is hardly the time for a strip tease," Dan deadpanned.

"Shut up and put those on." Phil glanced over his shoulder. The last boat of women seemed to be going down. "Look, first class men will be off next."

Dan, who had begun buttoning the jacket, stilled. "I'm not leaving."

"You'll die," Phil said.

"I have friends here!" Dan flung a hand at the deck. "I—I only just met you. It's not fair."

"No, it's not," Phil agreed. "It's not fair the ship's going down. It's not fair a lot of people are going to die. But this," he buttoned the jacket himself, fingers fumbling, "this is fair. You're a good person, Dan—what's your last name?"

"Howell."

"Dan Howell. You're a good person. You're my friend. I'm not letting you die."

He expected more arguments, but the ship groaned again, pitching down, their end flying up, screaming. Phil reached out, automatically, to steady Dan, who said, "Okay. Okay."

The disguise wasn't complete, the white trousers still stood out, the cheap shoes, but Phil hoped that in the chaos the details would be overlooked. He just had to get back to his father, to his brother. Just had to get on a boat.

Dan grabbed his arm, and Phil's feet were suddenly dangling above an abyss as the ground shifted, as the world turned upside down, as they were pulled upwards. Gravity wasn't touching them.

He looked up to see Dan with his legs and one arm wrapped around the deck's metal railing. And then Dan heaved, and Phil scrambled up next to him.

They looked down, saw people crashing into the water. Phil wondered where his father and brother were and then pushed it out of his mind. At that moment, he imagined them alive and whole, couldn't think of them any other way.

He was going to die.

He was elbow-to-elbow with Dan, who was shaking. Correction. They were going to die.

The ship was completely vertical now, the sea a roiling black mass a hundred feet below. Phil felt high enough to scrape the sky.

"I would have gotten off in America," Dan said, suddenly. "I mean—I know you're about nineteen classes above me, but I hear that doesn't matter so much in America. I thought we could," he laughed, almost nervously. "I don't know why, but I kept thinking we could hang out, there. That we could be friends."

"We would have been," Phil said. In that one sentence, dashing all hope of a future. America, a wife, a life—all, now, a would have been. He gripped Dan's elbow. "We are friends."

They teetered on a precipice. A moment of almost silence.

This was all wrong, Phil thought. He should be sleeping. He should be waking up and sneaking off with Dan in the morning. He shouldn't be here.

"You're been nothing but bad luck since I met you, Phil Lester," Dan said, in the quiet. "But I feel like we were supposed to be best friends."

And then there was a sound, like metal screaming, like glass shrieking, and they were being sucked down, down, down. Dan gripped Phil's shoulder, and Phil grabbed Dan's waist, and they fell through the darkness.

It was almost painless, death. Dan's knuckles like grooves on his shoulder. Dan, who was afraid of the dark. Phil remembered, and opened his mouth to tell him not to be scared; that this was not the end; that he, Phil, was here, and they were together, and that made it better, somehow.

His lungs filled with water. He held Dan tight.

In his last moments, he thought he saw stars.

.

 **.**

 **thanks to those who reviewed. hopefully we can get a few more chapters on this before getting creeped out by our own RPF.**


	4. 1944 AD

_**Dan:** There is ONE MARSHMALLOW!_

 _ **Phil:** I can't be trusted! I've got a problem!_

 _ **Dan:** I TOLD YOU I wanted to use these!...well, thankfully, I kind of predicted that you'd have no self control, so I did buy two extra packets that you didn't know about._

 _ **Phil:** Oooh!_

 ** _Dan:_** _No. No! For baking! *to camera* This guy..._

 **2015**

.***.

Phil got up in the dark, crawling over Dan. They'd been hunting through the town all day, and by evening poor Dan was coughing, red-eyed and feverish, shivering under his blanket so badly that Phil had added his own, tucking it under his friend's trembling arms, tugging on it to cover his exposed and sweaty neck. So, no, Dan wasn't ready to wake up yet. It was almost four in the morning. The rest of the company would be awake in two hours, expecting breakfast.

He hadn't been surprised at the draft, of course. His mother had cried, but when Phil's number came up he already had a packed bag. So he took his mother's wrapped sandwiches, reported for duty. What _was_ surprising was how much he liked the army life. He'd been assigned a cook on his first day (Phil suspected his natural clumsiness had made the superior officers wary of trusting him with grenades.) He'd trained with the rest of the men, all two hundred members of the 36th Infantry. But he'd trained especially hard with the other cooks, climbing over walls together, learning the supply chain, laughing at night over their debacles with guns. And that's how he'd met Dan.

Phil's entire army experience could be traced in two ways. Geographically: through Normandy and into Belgium; freezing in Bastogne. Or it could be traced with Dan: meeting him on the first day of basic; Dan scrounging for chickens in France and almost getting shot; Phil liberating several pails of real milk in Belgium and actually getting shot. Dan had pressed his handkerchief against Phil's thigh throughout their moving out, holding him through enemy lines, both praying it wasn't serious enough for a real hospital.

If you get sent to the back, to heal away from the action, there was no guarantee of being placed back in the same unit, and neither Dan nor Phil could risk that. Fighting Nazis was all well and good when you had a best friend by your side. Without a friend?...well. War was hell.

With the sky bruised black, the last leg of patrol nodding cordially as he passed, Phil made it to the mess tent, past the makeshift tables, into the kitchen. He and Dan weren't the only cooks for the 36th but they were the only ones who'd been with the unit since the beginning. There was a rotating band of the very young or somewhat wounded who would bus tables. Those who had offended superior officers would scrub pots. And Dan and Phil would frantically try to stay ahead of the crowds.

"Morning, Lester," a young man said to him, and Phil nodded. He couldn't remember the blonde's name, only that he'd been bounced around so much after being wounded that the poor American had ended up with the British army. "No Dan?"

"Sick," Phil said, looking in crates, "Pneumonia, I think."

"Should see a medic," the other boy said.

"Just to be told he has pneumonia?" Phil shook his head, grabbing a carrot (a real carrot!) and a bag of potatoes. "Medicine's for fighting men, Oakley." That was his name! It had rolled off his tongue like he'd known it all along. "Won't spare any for us cooks."

"You're a sergeant!" Oakley protested. "And you're as much on the front lines as anyone else."

Phil shrugged, threw the blonde a bag of potatoes and a peeler. "I'm making soup today."

Fall was just folding into winter, and soup was becoming a go-to for the 36th. Phil would collect basil and rosemary, tuck it in with his socks, would trade for nutmeg, cinnamon, add it all until the air smelled like a pie, until the broth was savory and sweet.

"It's Troye's birthday," Oakley said, throwing the potatoes into a pot.

Which explained why he was here at four in the morning, when usually Dan and Phil had the room to themselves, planning out the day's meals. But if one of their privates wanted to woo a visiting nurse or (like Oakley) one of their fellow men, they would show up early, try to grab some sugar.

"Dan's usually the one who does the cakes," Phil hedged.

"Just a little one!" Oakley insisted. "I know you made a cake for Dan, like, two months ago."

"I'm not trying to get myself shot by getting into Dan's pants," Phil deadpanned, feeling his face burning.

"Not according to the rumors I heard," the blonde crowed. "But, leaving behind your inappropriate relationship -"

"Look who's talking!"

"I just want to make a cake!"

"Fine!" Phil chopped up the onion, which made him miss Dan ( _ohmygod!_ Dan would say, shoving him out of the way. _You do not get to play with knives!_ ) He boiled water in ten gigantic pots, dumped the onions, chopped the carrot. Added salt. Added the spices. Chatted with Oakley as the water boiled. "Look," Phil said as he scooped the soup into a bowl. "You can make one very small cake for your crush _if_ you make sure that the soup is totally ready for breakfast."

"Yes!" Oakley said, practically jumping up and down. "On it, Sarge. You taking Dan that soup?" The private reached into a basket and drew out a heel of coarse brown bread. "I saved that from last night," Oakley explained as Phil stared at it in surprise. "Tell Dan to feel better soon!"

Phil took a bite out of the bread, waved a goodbye.

Dawn was greying the sky as he snaked his way back through camp, nodding at the men just getting up, saluting a major, dodging a jeep. He elbowed open their tent flap and could feel in the still and thick air that Dan was not any better. He tucked the soup under his elbow, shook his friend lightly. "Dan," Phil murmured, pressing the back of his fingers to Dan's forehead. "Dan?"

"mumgh," Dan croaked, "i'm dead."

Phil had to lean close to hear the whisper, put the soup under Dan's nose. "You're not dead, but it is morning and there's inspection in, like, twenty minutes."

"i can't stand," Dan protested, "i can't even get out of bed."

"Well, we'll work on that." Phil prodded and nudged until Dan was in a floppy sitting position. "Open for the airplane."

"i can do it myself," Dan whispered, and took the spoon, and coughed, and the soup went everywhere, and he gave the spoon back. "i cannot."

"It's okay," Phil said, easily. "But you can't lean on me."

"yer nice n cold," Dan groaned.

"And I can't move my arms. Come on, mate. Sit up, pass inspection, and you can nap in the kitchen."

"you had to make everything this morning without me," Dan said, obviously struggling to sit upright. "sorry."

"You'll cover for me when I have pneumonia, which is guaranteed to happen with you sleeping four inches from me."

Dan just closed his eyes, and Phil snapped his mouth shut, spooning another mouthful of broth. "It really took it out of you, huh?" Phil said, grateful that Dan had never changed out of his uniform from the night before. It was slightly damp and very mussed but at least it was a uniform.

And, halfway through the bowl, Dan had stopped shivering enough to take the bowl between his hands and lift it to his cracked lips. "It's good, Phil," he said, smacking his lips at the bottom, his voice stronger. "Really, really good."

Phil helped Dan to his feet and told him about Oakley and his puppy-dogging around the other privates. They made it to the mess tent with Dan only minimally leaning on Phil, and by the time the 36th was filing in to be fed Dan was at his usual place on the serving line, right in the middle, where he didn't have to talk to anyone.

Phil was at the end of the line, handing everyone silverware, chatting amicably with the younger men who were all white-faced and scared-looking and cold. "Your doing just fine," he'd say, "good morning! D'you want another piece of bread? There's extra today! How often in the army do you get to say that?"

He kept up a steady patter, helloing his friends, getting cordial greetings from everyone else. Phil knew that this tired-looking bunch was the difference between freedom and tyranny, and did his best to make sure he was sunny. He wanted every man to have at least one smile in his day.

"Hello, sir," he said to a major he didn't recognize. "Good morning, isn't it?"

But instead of a grunt of a "yes" or a "how are you?" the major just turned a set of flat grey eyes in his direction. "This is the second soup the unit's eaten this week."

Phil straightened, heels clicking together. "You're right, sir."

"Don't you think these fighting men deserve something more substantial for breakfast than soup?"

"I do, sir," Phil said, sticking his chest out so his sergeant stripes were shining. He may be an enlisted man but he was an army man, too. "If the army wants its men to have a better breakfast, I would suggest working on a better supply chain. Sir."

A captain Phil did recognize, a young reckless man named Speirs, paused on his way to the table. Back turned, he was obviously listening to the conversation.

"Are you questioning me, sergeant?"

"Not at all, sir," Phil said. His heart was thudding in his throat. Usually it was Dan being insubordinate, making comments under his breath. But Dan was sick and Phil had caught some of his fire overnight. "Would you like some more soup, major?"

"I would like an explanation," the major began, taking a step forward, slamming the tray down on the table in front of Phil.

And in that moment, two things happened. The reckless Speirs touched the major's shoulder, and Dan slid smoothly in front of Phil. Back straight and chin up, he hid Phil from view almost completely.

"My hero," Phil muttered at Dan's back. "Aren't you supposed to be dying of the plague?"

"I wanted to get in on the action," Dan whispered back. "You never mouth off to anyone interesting when I'm around."

"Potter isn't going to like this," Phil warned, glancing at the C.O.

"What's he gonna do? Put us on KP?"

Speirs was saying something to the major, and Phil leaned forward to listen when the first bomb exploded.

There were rules in war. Don't shoot medics, even if they worked for the other side. Don't bomb the wounded, or the kitchen, or the camp. Don't shoot children, or hurt civilians. Don't fight on Christmas. But anyone who'd ever been in battle knew the truth: in war, there are no rules.

The ground shook, the pots flying, Phil and Dan darting around the breakfast line trying to secure everything. Sergeants and captains and majors barking orders, _Phil_ barking orders, the tent emptying in a flash as every man ran into formation and the second bomb hit, whee-floom, taking out a tent and a quartet of young men who spent their free time hunting through ransacked cities for books. Another bomb, even closer, and Phil sent Oakley and Dan to the medical tent. This happened, sometimes, and it was the cook's job to help with the wounded.

"Come with us," Dan said, cringing as another bomb whizzed, exploded nearby.

Phil glanced at his friend, still pale but with the gleam of battle in his eye. War was hell, but it was also undeniably, just a little bit, exciting.

Oakley was already running ahead, but Phil wavered, glancing at the breakfast that would be ruined and left behind. So many in the 36th were starving, and nothing was better for morale than good eggs, or fresh bread, or chocolate. Phil knew that his part in this machine was small, but whenever he or Dan were able to cobble together something like a decent meal he felt mighty.

"Grab as much as you can carry," Phil said, and Dan nodded, kicking over a crate and filling bowl after bowl with soup. They'd feed the wounded but keep some back for the medics, those brave and shivering boys who had shown up to basic, like Phil, but instead of being told to go to the kitchen were handed a syringe of morphine and too few bandages and ordered to hold the bleeding boys together with gum and string.

He pulled out the bread he was saving for dinner and grabbed the precious sugar, the chocolate, the salt, until it was too much to carry, until he was staggering under the weight and Dan, trembling and sick Dan, had to help him, both lifting their crates onto their shoulders, stopping at the tent flap, eyes wide at the sight of their orderly camp, which served tea every day at four o'clock (thanks to them, Dan and Phil, who would trade anything, anything for tea) up in flames.

"Medical tent's that way," Phil said, eyes to the sky. There were German bombers circling but right on their tails were the unmistakable noses of the American planes. Someone had called in the cavalry.

He took a deep breath, glanced at Dan. "If we don't make it," he began. The lenses of Dan's eyes were reflecting flames. War was hell, all right.

"We will," Dan murmured.

"You're the best friend I ever..."

"I know," Dan said, quickly. "Same. You, too." He hoisted a smile on his face. "Once this is over, we'll get a little piece of land. Grow old and fat together."

Another bomb hit, and they didn't know it but the blonde who'd been helping all morning, the young American who had wandered into the British camp, was killed as he tried to drag his crush out of a burning tent. They didn't know it, but Oakley would die with a cake in his pocket, hidden the same way a man would hide a diamond ring.

Phil was staggering under the weight of the food, but he extracted a hand, pulled Dan close to him. Their foreheads touched for a moment.

And then they ran.

They were within fifteen paces of the medical tent, and Phil could see the red crosses, the blazing insignia that help was on the way, that everything would be all right now. A German plane had dipped low over the camp and the bullets were pelting around their feet and they couldn't do anything but run.

It was a small sound, death. A little gasp of shock, and Dan's crate of food went flying and the boy collapsed in the mud.

Phil turned.

He thought, in his last moment, that the smoke-filled world was almost beautiful.

.

.

 **so obviously we're american, which is why the british army in wwii sounds a lot like _band of brothers_. thanks again for all the reviews. school starts in two weeks so we're trying to get a majority of this story done before then.**


	5. 1964 AD

**danisnotonfire:** is it possible to live without 1/5 of your heart

 **tyleroakley:** dan

 **danisnotonfire:** i'm not crying there's just a zayn in my eye

 **2015** _  
_

 _.***._

Phil was mumbling the lyrics to "Please Please Me," shimmying as he fumbled around for his bulky headphones, a little distracted by the sight of the Washington Coliseum suddenly empty after the screams and crowds of less than an hour before. He bobbed his head, walking out the back stage door, and got right up to where the truck is supposed to be before he realized it isn't there.

"Took off without you, huh?"

Phil turned in the spot, headphones slipping from his fingers. "They - I mean, I'm sure they'll come back," Phil said to the shape in the darkness.

The shape took a few steps forward and coalesced into the form of a man, perhaps a few years younger than Phil, the beginnings of a smirk playing at the corner of his lips. "I'm sure they won't," the man said, "A bunch of the wilder girls mobbed the guitarist, what's-his-name, Harrison, and nearly broke his arm. Or did break his arm. Either way, they all took for the hospital."

As he spoke, Phil noticed the little accoutrements he'd gotten so used to over his three weeks with the Beatles. The pencil the man had stuck behind one ear. the pad in his hand. The look in his eye, like he'd do anything for a scoop. "So why aren't you there?" Phil accused, "with the other reporters?"

The man's smirk was full-fledged now. "No use getting the same story as everyone else. I thought if I stuck around here long enough I'd find a rodie - that's what you are, right? Moving the equipment?"

"I'm a videographer," Phil said, defensively. Everyone thought he was a rodie and no one knew what a videographer was. "I'm filming the tour"

"Fancy."

"It's quite new." Phil crossed his arms over his chest. It was freezing. It was February and he was in shirt-sleeves, had been hot during the concert and lost his jacket. "I wouldn't expect you to understand."

The other man barked out a laugh, "Why don't a buy you a drink? Then we can talk about all the many things I don't understand, Mr..." he trailed off, waited for a name.

Grudgingly: "Phil Lester. Phil."

An even bigger smile: "Dan Howell. Pleasure to meet you."

.***.

What can be said about that night that hasn't been said about the many others like it? In that first flush of friendship, Phil accompanied Dan, the local, to the various cheap bars in the Capitol and they talked and talked. Dan spent the majority of their first hour together repeating everything Phil said, trying to parrot the accent, and only stopped when Phil attempted a horrendous American accent and Dan laughed so hard he dropped his drink. That was the end of the first bar.

Then onto a smaller, quieter place. Phil ordered coffee and asked Dan what it was like living in the Capitol with the president so recently murdered, and Dan had gotten this look on his face like he'd been hit somewhere important. Then he'd asked Phil what it was like flying across the ocean. If it was scary. If Phil was afraid of falling. And Phil had admitted that he was scared but the lads (he called the band "the lads," it's what they called each other, and Dan had grinned again at this information) but the lads had done it before and had all the bluff and bravado of young men who would swear that they couldn't die. And so Phil was brave in their presence. And on to the next bar.

There they talked about other things. Family. Their growing-up years. Phil talked about his brother, who was kind, who rescued dogs from off the street. Dan just nodded and didn't say much. He had been born with a family, of course, but had been fending for himself for so long that he didn't think of them except for with a sad wistfulness. "I grew up in an orphanage," Dan said, which was part of the truth, and Phil made a sympathetic clucking noise. And they out the door, into a snowy early-morning.

"I'm staying..." Phil groped for a name, was too mind-numb to remember. "Well," he said, slowly turning on the spot to see a snow-fallen D.C. world. "This isn't good."

"Is the band leaving early tomorrow?"

Phil shook his head. He may not remember his hotel but the itinerary was a part of him by now. "They have an afternoon show back at the Coliseum."

"Great," Dan nodded as if that settled everything.

"Great?"

"You'll just stay with me."

.***.

Phil paused at the top of the stairs, trying to get his breath back after the six floors of walking, but Dan mistook his hesitation for something else, for disgust at the open door, and Dan said quickly as he pushed his way inside, "It's small, I know, but it's just me and Coda you know and, um, it's cheap. Or used to be. I used to help out at the store downstairs - did you see the furniture place? But they closed and so...um, yeah, my lease is up next week and I think I'm gonna have to find somewhere else." He snapped his mouth shut, swallowed, picked up a small mewling mass.

On closer inspection, Phil realized the yawning grey fluff was a cat, scrawny and young. "I found her in a dumpster," Dan said, a hint of anger creeping into his voice. "She was so little she didn't even have her eyes open, and someone tried to get rid of her in the snow and everything. I'm not home much, but I figure living here is better than dying outside."

Phil had his hands out, and Dan hesitated but handed over the cat so Phil could nuzzle his cheek against her tiny head, listen to her purr. "She's so pretty," he said. "I'm sure she's happy." Dan relaxed minutely and Phil continued, "and the place is great. So clean! You should see my flat - socks everywhere."

"Flat," Dan repeated. He chuckled.

"I might steal your cat," Phil warned, padding further into the apartment. "Now that you've rescued both Coda and me from the cold. I feel like we have a bond."

He expected Dan to retort with something sweet and playful, as he'd been doing all night, but the man seemed more melancholy back home. "She might be better off, poor girl. I'll be sleeping at the Y next week if I can't sell a story before rent's due." He threw Phil a pair of clean sweatpants and an over-large t-shirt. "See if they fit - I think they will, we're both giants, huh?"

"What's a why?" Phil asked, peeling off his dress shirt.

"A why? Oh - a Y, like the YMCA? You know, like a shelter? The ones in D.C. are nice, but they're kind of anti-cat."

"You're that skint?"

"You need to stop speaking British, man, I can't understand -"

"You're...out of money?"

"Well," Dan fidgeted, eyes skitting away from Phil's bare chest. "Yeah. I've always wanted to be a newspaper man, write about movies and bands. But I need to sell a good story to get hired by someone respectable, and it's hard to get a story unless you're with someone respectable so..."

"That's why you were hanging around the concert?"

"It's kind of my last chance. I promised myself a year to make it work, this newspaper thing. Otherwise maybe I'll head up down to Virginia. Look into the mines. It's...well, I know you probably don't think about it where you are, but it's harder to get drafted, you know. If you have a good job."

Coda let out a soft mew and Phil blinked in the darkness. "Right. Well, then we'll have to get you a story."

"No," Dan looked embarrassed, standing by the kettle, cheeks flushed in the strange flourescense of the bare bulbs. "I'm sorry for complaining. I think I'm drunk. You don't have to -"

"I want to." Phil couldn't stand the way his heart was beating, as if he was friends with this man - and wasn't he? He was sleeping in Dan's apartment, watching the snow fall into a blanket over the Capitol of a strange country, and there was something about Dan's manner and bearing that broke Phil's heart, a memory of protectiveness, as if Phil had known Dan once, when they were small. "I - I might be able to convince the lads to give you an interview. Would that help?"

"Would it help?" Dan echoed, staring at him, dumbfounded. "I can't ask you to do that for me."

"You didn't ask," Phil said. "It's a thank-you. To my new friend."

He went into the bathroom to splash water on his face, to hang up his suit, and when he came out Dan was asleep on the couch and the bed was made up, ready for Phil. There was a cup of tea next to Coda on the nightstand, with a note. _For my new friend,_ it read. _Thanks for everything_.

.***.

The next morning Dan loitered outside the theater as Phil steeled himself, put on a smile, walked over to the band as they smoked and drank coffee and played chords. "Phil Lester," Ringo said, "that looks alarmingly similar to the suit you were wearing yesterday."

"It's only alarming because it implies that Phil slept at some pretty bird's place last night and we did not," Paul chimed in.

Phil flushed. He hadn't known that the lads knew his name. There weren't many rodies attached to the tour, but brand-new Phil assumed he was the lowest of the low rungs. Everyone laughed at his blush. "How's your arm, George?" Phil asked, still working up his courage.

"The fans are getting rabid, they are," the youngest band member said, flexing his fingers around the splint. "I'm not playing guitar anytime soon, but I'll live."

"What can we do for you?" John, obviously, mumbling around a fag, eyes still half-lidded as if he weren't all the way awake yet.

Phil squeezed his eyes shut. "My, um, my friend."

"The pretty friend from last night?" Ringo asked, and his band-mates snickered.

"He needs an interview," Phil said. "Really needs one. It can be short, I promise, but..."

"He?" John said, slyly. "Oh-ho, they grow up so fast, don't they Paulie?" He cut Paul a look and the two grinned.

"He's right outside," Phil plowed on before the lads could work themselves into a state, start talking over each other to prove who was funniest, it happened all the time. "Just five minutes..."

"No problem," Ringo said, though he was rarely the spokesperson. "Send him in, Philly, before these lads lose their nerve."

.***.

Dear Phil,

Holy Toledo it's out! In the Washington Post no less, and they said they want more if they can get it, so they're sending me to England! Coda's staying with my downstairs neighbor (yes, I still have a neighbor - the Post pays handsomely, my friend) and I was wondering if we could shack up together like old times. I'll be following the band for their European tour, and then who knows what! The future is out there.

See you soon!

Dan

PS: If you read the enclosed article, you might see that I managed to include a special someone.

-DH

.

Dear Dan,

I swear the band prefers you to me. They were all morose when you went back to the States, and my oven certainly misses our culinary adventures. I woke up this morning thinking of that night in Hamburg, when you convinced that bar-tender we were long-lost princes and we were flush in cups for the whole evening. The lads will be working on their new album for the duration, so I got a new gig on the Who's American tour. First stop - D.C. Looking forward to seeing you and Coda! I'll have some tickets for you at the box office (under the name Prince Charles of Poppingtop, of course.)

With affection,

Phil

.

Dear Phil,

Coda is missing you already. I feel like I owe my whole career to you - the Who could not have been more fun to write about, and the Post loved all of the interviews.

Look, Philly, I know you were talking about moving to the States permanently, trying to get in on the Civil Rights rally business, and I think you'd be great, but - there's no good way to put it. My number's come up. I ship out next month.

I know everyone talks about this war like a death sentence but you know me by now. It is a goddamn war, but it's my country's war. I'm not dodging, or going to Canada, or to England and you, as much as I want to and as much as I understand the boys who do. I've lived up to now by the grace of my country, and I owe them this. I will write you from over there, obviously, and if you're intent on moving to the States then you can take over the "flat" and Coda, and we'll have a nice little life when I get back.

With love,

Dan

.

Dear Dan,

Your letters are always so funny and hopeful. The Post is printing them, you know. You have a regular column still, more bayonets than Beatles, but you're quite a hit.

Coda misses you. I miss you. Stay safe, my reckless friend. I wish I was there with you, to pull you out of all the trouble you cause. I worry about you constantly. Please come home.

Love always,

Phil

.

Dear Dan,

Missing in Action doesn't always mean dead, right? So I'm going to continue with these letters, because you might come back. You're going to come back.

The Post sent me your last paycheck. We can afford a place in the country. Meet girls. Have a good life. I cried for an hour when I got the letter. I'm still crying. Come home. America isn't the same without you.

Love always,

Phil

.

Dear Dan,

This is the ninety-fifth letter I've sent without a reply. I wonder who's holding them all?

John Lennon was killed today. I saw him, before he died. He asked about you. I think he was a big supporter of Dan and Phil, to be honest.

Daniel is turning thirteen next week. I showed him a picture of you, and I showed him your articles. He was embarrassed, you see, about his dad being a pacifist, about my documentaries against war and for peace. And so I told him about you. And how you're still missing in a jungle somewhere. I don't know if he understands - who can grasp, at thirteen, the concept of death? But perhaps your name bears some weight of genetics. He is a true D.C. native. He has your eyes.

We will meet again, Dan. Until then, I miss you.

Love,

Phil

 **.**

 **.**

 **we wanted to write a one direction story but needed it to be in the past so the Beatles might sound a little like everyone's favorite boy band.**


	6. 2016

_**Dan:** Everyone's gonna be like "where's Phil? Get Phil to come back!" He buying chicken! He doesn't have time to talk to you! __  
__**Phil:** *laughing off camera*  
_ _ **Dan:** Good luck on your chicken quest.  
_ _ **Phil:** Thanks!  
 **Dan:** Don't get shot!  
_

 **2014** _  
_

 _.***._

Dan wakes, his arm automatically flailing for the light and hitting something soft and squishy instead.

"Ow!"

"Phil! What are you doing in my room?" Dan sits up, gropes at the real light switch.

Phil swims into view, rubbing his arm, hair standing straight and spiky, glasses on. It's almost morning and the world outside the window's a sleety black. "Phil?" Dan asks again, voice sharp with exhaustion.

"You were crying." Phil rubs the back of his neck. "Pax woke me up, you were crying so loud."

"Crying?"

"I thought you were awake," Phil says, quickly, "I thought something was wrong, so I came in and you were having the worst nightmare. I tried to wake you up."

"Yeah," Dan says, a flash of lightning going down his spine, landing hard and heavy in his gut. He never really remembers the dreams that had him waking up at all hours, sweating and shaking. He remembers only that he died, and Phil was there, and Phil died. He remembers the hollow feeling, the aching knowledge that the dream was real, and Phil was gone, and he, Dan, couldn't do anything to stop it.

He doesn't say any of this out loud, but he doesn't have to. Phil nods. He's the best kind of friend. The kind everyone hopes for but no one deserves, least of all Dan.

"I'll make some coffee," Phil says, smiling even though it was too early to smile. "Do you want me to leave Pax?"

Phil's golden retriever is peering into the room from the doorway, expression perpetually worried. "Yes, please," Dan says, and Pax jumps onto the bed as if called, cuddling with Dan and the pillows. "And - hot chocolate? Thanks."

Phil nods, like it's really no problem to be woken up at five o'clock in the morning. Dan watches him pad out of the room and then devotes every part of his brain to rubbing Pax's enormous head, stroking the dog's ears. Pax licks the tears off of Dan's cheeks.

When they'd first moved in together, the dog was a part of the deal. Phil had Pax since university, rescued him from a cardboard box on a stormy winter's morning. Pax became a dorm dog, the school mascot, was loved and lovable, but Dan protested. Finding a place in London was hard enough without trying to find someplace dog-friendly. But Phil said that he'd do all the house hunting, that Dan just had to pick the best of the lot.

Now, Pax has a bigger fanclub than the boys themselves, the dog a living proof of their congenial domesticity. He's asked for in every video, laying on the couch in the game room, pacing back and forth in the kitchen. But he's done more than that: getting the boys out of the house, greeting them after a tour. Pax is always, always so happy to see them that it breaks Dan's heart, every time, leaving and coming home.

"Hey, buddy," Dan says now, pressing his forehead to Pax's forehead. "Thanks for checking on me."

"You're welcome!" Phil calls from the kitchen.

"I was talking to our dog!" Dan calls back, pushing himself out of bed and heading down the hallway.

"Well, Pax says you're welcome, too," Phil clarifies, his back to Dan, waiting for the milk to boil, stirring at a pot.

"Aww!" Dan presses a hand to his heart, "you're breaking out the real hot chocolate skills for me?"

Phil's poised with the cocoa powder. "Don't expect this every time you have a nightmare," Phil warns, eyes sliding over to Dan.

He knows the question even before Phil asks. "Yeah," Dan says, "yeah, it was like the other ones. World War II this time," he rubs his forehead. "I had a fever."

"You have a fever?" Phil repeats.

"No no, in the dream." Dan rubs his forehead. "I don't know. Maybe I'm coming down with something."

Phil crosses his index fingers, puts them in front of his face like a shield. "Not near me you're not." He yawns, crumbles some chocolate in the pot, looks out the window. "You know what we can do today?"

"Sleep?"

"We can see the sun rise."

Dan makes a face. "Seriously? You want to go outside?"

"No one will every believe us!" Phil says, grinning. "Also, Pax wants a walk."

They both look at the golden retriever, wagging his tail near the door, and that decides it. They put the hot chocolate into take-away cups, bundle into jackets and hats, grab Pax's leash, and remember at the last minute that they can't storm down the stairs because they are awake early enough to actually wake others up.

Outside the air is crisp in a way that promises fall. Pax leads the way to the river and Dan and Phil follow, trying to interpret Dan's dream. Does it mean he should join the army? Or that Phil should join the army? Does it mean they should make soup?

"Even my subconscious knew you shouldn't be trusted with grenades," Dan points out, and Phil pushes him.

Pax is back in an instant, jumping between them. He doesn't like confrontation and is protective of both boys to the point of jealousy. "It's okay!" Phil insists, putting his hands up. "It's okay, baby."

"He's hardly a baby," Dan points out.

"Don't say that!" Phil puts his hands over the dog's ears. "He's as young as they come."

"He's getting grey," Dan says fondly. "Poor old boy."

Phil's kneeling, staring in the great brown eyes, "Don't listen to him. Grey is a distinguished color for a puppy."

Dan takes the leash and the conversation meanders. What would Phil be doing if it was 1920 and there was no internet? Could Dan survive as a member of Mars One? Phil tells Dan that Jupiter is so large, so absolutely enormous, that it could be a failed star. Dan counters by explaining in tremendous detail all the different kinds of dumplings in the world. Ravioli, knish, potstickers, pirogies...

They're sitting on a bench now, near the grimy river, Pax off his leash and sniffing somewhere behind them. The sunrise is a less-than-glorious grey, but neither boy really minds. Phil interrupts Dan's soliloquy about empanadas to go look for his dog, and Dan takes out his phone, scrolling through Twitter, wondering what L.A. and San Fran are up to.

"Pa-ax!" Phil calls, quickly leaving the river behind and poking his head around different trees, down different alleys. "Come on! Pax!" Their friends always comment on how well-trained Pax is, how eager to come when called. But Pax is nowhere to be found.

Until he is.

In a picture:

The sun's coming up over the water and the whole thing is shimmery, it's the kind of light Phil wants to bottle for pictures, wants to put in his pocket and bring inside for videos. It's golden, and brings all the promises of a new day, all the heartache and terrors and triumphs of life. And the sun spills into the alley where Phil stands, goosebumps under thin jacket, back straight and tense as he looks further down the alley. And there, where the light doesn't quite touch, is Pax, being held by the collar by a man in a dirty hat, a man as large as a barge, pasty skin ugly in the shadow, made uglier by a gun pointing at Pax's soft, fragile, golden head.

"This your dog, love?" the Big as a Barge man says, his voice almost tender.

Phil only knows the next sound because he heard it on television a thousand times. It's the steady click of a bullet sliding into its chamber.

He finds his voice, rougher and lower than usual, a growl. "What do you want?"

"Depends what you have, love," the Barge says. The gun must be pressing hard against Pax's temple because the dog whines and yips, squirming away from the gun and towards Phil. "What do you got in that fancy bag there?"

It's just a regular backpack, and Phil slides it off slowly. "It's okay, Pax," he says, eyes trained on his dog. "It's okay, boy."

His phone is in the big pocket, thrown in as he put the bag together in the morning. If he could grab it - call the police. But the Big Barge man's staring at him with weasel eyes and suddenly Phil is every inch the coward. He stares at Pax as he taps the phone, hoping that some miracle will make him hit all the right numbers.

"I have a camera," Phil says, and he can hear his voice crack and he hates it. "It's a nice one. And I have forty quid."

"Aw, love," the big man says, gun swiveling until it pointed at Phil. "I think you're holding out on me."

.***.

Dan looks up when he hears Pax barking. Pax never barks. Their neighbors constantly forget that they have a dog. Dan stands when the noise is cut off abruptly, silenced in a low squeal. "Phil? Pax?" He grabs his bag, takes one last look at the sunrise, swivels on the spot. "Phil?"

There's a sound like all the breath being driven out of a young man's body, and he breaks into a run. He skids into the alley in time to see the gun pointed at Phil.

"Dan, go," Phil says, not looking at him.

"No..." Dan doesn't move, just takes it all in. Their dog barking even though Pax never barks, being held by an enormous man who is pointing a gun at his best friend.

"Dan." Phil's voice is stronger and he looks over his shoulder. His eyes are wide and frightened, but his mouth is pressed in a serious line. "Go!"

"Not so fast," the man with the gun says. "This one looks like a little rich boy." And then he giggles, an eerily high-pitched sound from such a huge body, and the gun is pointing at Dan now.

He's already emptying his pockets. Wallet and keys. Phone. A stowed away a fifty pound note. He doesn't even remember putting it in there. "Take it," Dan says, holding everything out in front of him. "Just let them go."

"Dan..." Phil sighs.

The gun's back on Phil, then on Dan, then on Pax, as if the would-be robber can't decide who to shoot. "You don't think I'm serious?" the big guy sounds almost sad. "I'm serious as they come."

Dan jumps as the gun goes off because Phil's screaming, shoulders hunched, and Dan reaches out for him, trying to find where the bullet went, patting his friend's torso and legs, his arms, and it's like every nightmare he's ever had with his heart stopped and in his throat all at once and he feels like he's going to throw up and he's shaking, shaking all over, because Phil is shot and will die and will leave Dan here alone.

And then the screams morph into words. "Pax! Pax! Oh god! Pax!"

"Phil," Dan says, the word breaking. He can't look in the direction of the golden retriever, doesn't want to see the body, the blood. He wants to remember Pax as that gentle and lovable giant, the one that jumps up when Dan falls out of his chair during scary video games, licking his face to make sure, make quite sure, he's all right.

It's like all the bones leave Phil's body and he sags, falling against Dan, a limp pile. "Phil," Dan says again, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Shh." he wants to collapse to the ground with his friend, wants to grieve, but there's a gun in the alleyway and there's an angry man and there's nothing, nothing Dan can do to make this better, not alone. He can only be brave when Phil's around.

"What do you want?" Phil screams, tearing away from Dan, and if Dan was scared before he's terrified now. Phil doesn't scream. Dogs don't get shot. Maybe he's still dreaming, and he'll wake up to coffee and an anime and Pax's heavy head in his lap.

Phil takes a step towards the man with the gun. "What do you want?"

"Phil," Dan's pleading, reaching. "No."

He's shaken off. Phil takes another step forward and Dan notices that he's standing tall, fists clenched. Phil usually, habitually, crouches, England being built too small for six-footers, but he's at his full height now, and angry.

Phil throws his backpack at the gunman's feet, throws cell phones and wallets. "Let me have my dog," Phil seethes, "Let me have him to bury, let me and my friend go, and."

"And?" The enormous man is grinning widely.

"And we'll keep quiet," Phil's right in front of the man with the gun, eyes focused on Pax's limp body. "Promise."

"I never trusted the promises of a couple a queers before, love," the man with the gun promises. "And I'm not going to start now."

There's sirens in the distance.

Phil turns, and the sun glints off his eyes and they're white, like the eyes of god. "Dan, run!"

There's a bang.

Phil falls next to his golden retriever.

Dan stumbles backward, shoes skidding on the dawn-dewed pavement.

In the fog the police cars emerge like avenging angels. But they're too late, Dan thinks, because his dog his dead, and his friend is dead. And Dan pauses because he hasn't realized it yet but he's crying, crying harder than he had an hour ago, those sobs that had woken Phil up and led his good-hearted friend here to die. He's crying in the middle of the street, and the police are coming but they're far away, and there's a roaring in his ears like a hurricane.

And then there's only silence.

 **.**

 **.**

 **we stole one line from patrick rothfuss for this chapter. if you haven't read _name of the wind_ yet, read it, and you're welcome.**


	7. 2016 Take 2

**Dan:** I have got quite a selection for you today, Philly.

 **Phil:** Are you not coming on camera?

 **Dan:** No. Because I am in my pajamas.

 **Phil:** ...Aspirations.

 **2015**

.***.

Dan's already in his sofa crease, a shiny anime rolling through in the background (senpai! Phil thinks, as he always does, which is quite strange. Always just the word senpai at the sight of any anime, and in Dan's voice, as well.) "You have breakfast?" Dan asks, without looking up.

"No," Phil hovers, rubs a hand on his neck. "Had another of those dreams, though."

Dan stops scrolling. "Were we in Robin Hood tights again? Because I don't think I could handle another mental image..."

"You died," Phil interrupts, before Dan could get on a tangent.

"I always die," Dan points out. "It's like your subconscious is writing anti-phanfiction. That's some unresolved anger you've got there."

"You died," Phil begins again, "but it wasn't on the Titanic or being shot with an arrow or anything. It was today. Here, in London."

Dan rolls his eyes, a huge motion, looks back at Tumblr. "Killing past-me is one thing, Philly, but I'm pretty sure this is crossing a line." He waves a hand in the vague direction of the bedrooms. "Go back to bed. Dream about us dying in World War II or something."

Phil huffs, crosses his arms. "You went out -"

"Wrong!" Dan practically sings. "I never go out. We never go out."

"You went to get lunch with your mum-"

Dan snorts. His mother never comes to town. She's got a younger son to deal with, shuttling to sports practices and after-school clubs. More often it's Phil's mum taking them both out, calling Dan her third chid, sending him a present on his birthday.

Phil talks over his derision, "but there was a bomb - a terrorist attack."

"Phil," Dan says, reasonably parroting Phil's usual line back to him. "The odds of dying in a terrorist attack..."

"I know!" Phil says, "I know, okay? But - it was seriously weird. Not like the other dreams." He blinks, tries to come up with something to explain the ache he felt when he woke up, how his mouth and face was raw, like he'd been screaming, or crying. How when he knocked on Dan's door, before he heard the television, he'd just stood there, stunned. "You were wearing that shirt," he finally chokes out.

Dan looks down at his shirt, which is black, with a tiny, tiny smiley face in one corner. "I always wear this shirt."

"And you went to Starbucks, because your mum was late-"

"That sounds about right," Dan chips in.

"And then-" Phil puts his hands together, throws them apart. "Boom."

Dan gives him that look, that sad pitying one, and Phil can't stand it anymore, looks away, embarrassed. It's usually Dan who worries about the threat of ISIS and the bombings and shootings and plane crashes. Dan deals with unexpected, inexplicable atrocities by trying to be as prepared as possible, and Phil normally deals by ignoring them.

The moment is broken by Dan's phone vibrating. He glances at it, then at Phil. "Okay," Dan says, still smiling. "So, this doesn't prove anything, but it's my mum."

Dan's mum, who almost next texts, prefers to call, like all parents. Phil gapes, and Dan reads, "Hi! Needed some things from the city. Want to meet for lunch?"

"Don't do it," Phil says, folding one leg under him to sit on the couch, wrestling the phone out of Dan's hand to read for himself. He closes his eyes. Is this feeling, like a knot of dread in his stomach, de ja vu? "Seriously, Dan, say you're busy. Say we're busy."

"Doing what?" the other boy gestures at his sofa crease, at the television, at Phil, still in his pajamas. "Look, if we still had the book to do, I could say I was writing."

"Say we're making another book!" Phil suggests.

Dan raises his eyebrows. "You want me to lie to my mother because you had a weird dream last night?"

When he says it like that, it does sound far-fetched. But the attacks had been escalating recently, everyone upset about the Prime Minister's executive decision to stay in the EU despite a vote to the contrary; people in England rioting over the American election, in which front-runner Donald T rump had just been assassinated. It was the strangest summer Phil could remember, with even the Olympics being postponed until a different, non-Zika-ridden country could host.

Everything seemed to be unspooling. Shots fired near the London Eye. An explosion near Parliament. Like the country was stretching before the pounce.

Dan's still looking at him, and Phil bites his lip. "I could go with you."

"I'm perfectly capable of not getting blown up, thanks," Dan's already texting a reply, already standing up. Clothes to be found. He puts a hand on Phil's shoulder as he passes, a meaningless pat. "No one wants to bomb a Starbucks, anyway."

As soon as Dan leaves, Phil tries to do something productive. Read the comments on his latest video. Laundry. Chopping onions, putting them in little bags to take out when they made omelets or Mexican, chopping so fine and fierce that he starts crying. When the knife slips and he slices right above a nail he yelps, loud, and stares at the already-bloody finger as if he's never seen anything so red or precious before. And then walks into his bedroom, takes out a jacket, digs around for an Oyster card, finds his keys, leaves.

He gets off at Tottenham Court Road,. Dan's mum always goes to the little Italian place around the corner from the British Museum. She likes to stand in front of the Rosetta Stone, running a hand over the glass, eyes wide. It's the one thing she does every time she gets to London - stare at the stone, as if she could read it.

Which means Dan would be at the Starbucks with the big windows - and, yes, there. Slouched in a seat, thumb stroking the screen of his phone, slurping an iced coffee. He's not at all surprised to see Phil, and when he looks up his smile is wide, kind.

"Creepy, much?" He flicks his hand, wet with drink condensation. A drop slides down Phil's cheek, carving a path. Dan's smiling. "I actually expected you ages ago. My mum cancelled," he rolls his eyes, "so I was just waiting for you to show up." He looks at Phil's empty hands. "Not getting a drink?"

"No..."

Dan puts a hand dramatically over his heart. "You're right, this must be the end of the world if Phil Lester is passing on coffee!"

"Shut up," Phil mutters, his neck getting hot.

Dan's face transforms, almost serious. "Did you see anything strange on your way over?"

"No," Phil admits. "But that's the point, isn't it? That it's just a normal Wednesday, and then..."

"Boom," Dan finishes, still looking skeptical. "Yeah, you said."

Phil doesn't sit and Dan doesn't stand. "Are you not getting a coffee, because you think that if we leave now your dream won't come true?"

Not saying anything, Phil looks at his feet. When he looks up there's that look again - all fondness and exasperation. The look Phil most associates with Dan. "Phil, your dream's not going to come true no matter what. It's a dream."

"But -"

"When you dreamed we were hanging out with Robin Hood, did it come true?" Dan asks. "Or when you were a little lord and I was a waiter - which, thanks, by the way - and we got on the bloody Titanic..."

"I'm not saying it's rational," Phil protests, "I just have a bad feeling about this."

Dan frowns. "Then why'd you come?"

"What?"

"No, really," Dan crosses his arms, leans so that he's sandwiched between window and booth. "If you thought this place was going to get bombed, why'd you come?"

Phil shrugs, so embarrassed now that he can only look at the floor, at his shoe smoothing lines into the carpet. "I wanted to make sure you were okay," he says, quietly.

"I'm fine," Dan says, gently. "I'm fine, okay? Nothing's going to really happen. But I am starving, so let's blow this joint."

It's all Phil had wanted to do since they arrived, and he grab's Dan's coffee as the other man stands. He takes a long sip. "Hey!" Dan protests, "get your own!"

But he doesn't seem surprised when Phil doesn't get his own, just leads the way out the door into the too-hot London summer. "What do you want to eat?" Phil asks as the Starbucks disappears behind them. "Pasta? Pizza?" He tries to draw up a map of where they are in his head - which is something Phil is not exactly known for - and comes up with, "sushi?"

"I vote sushi and anime," Dan says, waving at the Google building as they passed.

"I don't remember that being one of the options." Phil is a lot more relaxed now that the Starbucks is blocks away, blocks and blocks. "But yeah. Sushi and Buffy."

"Sushi and Free!"

"I've had a rough day!" Phil protests, his voice rising several octaves. "Sushi and season three Buffy, take it or leave it."

A girl on the other side of Oxford Street recognizes them, jumping up and down, and they both wave, pausing at the top of the station steps. "Take it," Dan says, "but you order. If you do it now we can pick it up on the way home."

Sushiko is midway between the tube station and the house, which is their biggest benefit. Their biggest drawback was the lack of online ordering options. Phil puts the phone to his ear, grabbing Dan's arm as he starts to descend the steps. "There's no service down there."

"Hurry up," Dan whines, "I'm hungry."

"Don't know how I can be any faster," Phil says, frowning. "Is it weird that I have sushi on speed-dial."

"Yes, it's weird. Who uses speed-dial anymore?"

And that was it. That was how they ended up with street-level seats as the biggest terrorist attack on British soil occurred under their feet. Because a girl waved at them. Because they wanted sushi. They weren't on the train that exploded, killing every child and sister and father and commuters looking for love that made up its two hundred-odd passengers. They weren't on the platforms at either end, which caved in, Chicken Little-style, the sky is falling. They were out in the sun, laughing, thinking about California rolls, debating the relative merits of vampire-slayers and male swimmers.

A rumble underfoot. A roar. And then the screams.

"What the fuck?" Dan says, stupefied and stuck to the spot.

It's Phil's phone that clatters to the ground, forgotten as he grabs for Dan. Phil who pulls his friend away, tries to pull his friend away, but it's not the fire they're trying to outrun. It's the shockwave.

Phil's blown to the ground, one hand scrabbling. Where's Dan? He grabs a hand and pulls as the second wave hits.

They're knocked down again and Phil yanks on the hand he's grasping but Dan isn't moving (concussion? some part of his brain supplies. From the shockwave?) and there's people running, over and around them, running and screaming. A foot catches him in the small of his back and Phil stutters to his feet, staring around, standing with one leg on either side of his unmoving friend.

He crouches, pulls at Dan's shirt. Someone's on the other side of him, a man in a tie, fingers stretching for Dan's neck.

"Don't touch him!" Phil warns, pulling Dan closer.

But the stranger connects anyway. Leaves his fingers. Shakes his head. Is it just Phil's imagination, or has the sky gotten darker? "He's gone," the stranger says, their eyes meeting through the rubble and fissures of what used to be London. "Son, he's gone. There's nothing you can do for him."

Phil shakes his head. Begins to drag Dan away. If he could get next to a building, take cover, wait for this to pass...

"Son," the stranger's hands are on his shoulders. His voice in his ear. "Save yourself."

Someone kicks Dan's leg and the body moves. There's a roaring, like when you put a seashell to your ear, like listening to your own blood. The Starbucks, Phil thinks, is probably safe. This only happened - Dan was only here - because of Phil's stupid dream. Because Phil came to get him, and led him here.

He can't leave Dan, even if it is just a body. He can't leave the boy he got killed to be trampled underfoot.

Phil pulls again. It has definitely gotten darker, nighttime falling in a cascade of ash and smoke. Phil closes his eyes and tries to remember what Dan's face looked like when it wasn't stunned, frozen in an expression of blank astonishment.

He's kneeling now, trying to get them away from the crowd of people running, more people than Phil could have ever imagined. Someone kicked Dan's face. There's a boot mark stamped from cheek to cheek.

Phil touches the dirt, tries to wipe it away, and there's another flash of light. It's painful, death. Phil wraps his arms around what used to be Dan and keens.

Through the pain, he thinks: what, and why? He thinks: not today. He thinks: this can't be the end.

But it is.

.

.


	8. 2016 Take 3

**Dan:** _I'm gonna go ahead and say that we're here to play the Sims...I mean, this is very Dan and Phil Games. Start playing a game: 90% irrelevant waffle, 10% game play, but..._

 **Phil:** _I haven't seen you in like ten hours._

 **2015** _  
_

 _.***._

Phil's making Chinese with Dan on Skype, even though his roommate is only an hour away on a train from Brighton where he went with his girlfriend and got rained on for three days. "Is it still Chinese food if I'm making it?" Phil asks, glancing behind him at the counter, more habit than anything, these glances at the camera as if he's being recorded and not just seen by Dan's sleepy eyeballs.

"What, because you're the palest of the pale? Yes, Phil, I think it's the ingredients that make it Chinese, not the people." Phil doesn't need to look at the video to know that Dan's rolling his eyes. "Is it still French toast when you, a very not French person, makes it?"

"I don't actually know the origins of French toast. I don't think it was started in France."

Dan hums in agreement, watches Phil chop onions. "You better not eat that before I get there."

"I'm making it for you! I ate pizza the last two days."

"Did you really?"

"It's impossible to cook for yourself!"

"True, though." Dan yawns, snuggles lower in his train seat. "Can I just teleport through the camera?"

"Physically? No. Spiritually? Yes, that's literally what Skype is."

"Literally," Dan parrots with a smirk.

"Literally." Phil goes behind the camera, where he's making brownies, a surprise for Dan, who seemed to have a pretty tough weekend. Phil wasn't great at prying all those emotional details out of his friend, out of anyone, not liking conversations to get too serious. But he can read a room. He knows when to find a favorite Disney movie and make comfort food.

"I saw your Another Another Sleepless Night With Phil."

"Yeah?"

"Good name."

"You weren't supposed to be watching my videos, Danny. You were supposed to be getting laid."

Dan snorts, then frowns. "You know, I don't think she likes me very much."

"What do you mean, she doesn't like you very much?" Phil asks this warily. It sounds dangerously close to one of those Deep Conversations.

"Well, she cheated on me."

"Ouch."

"Oh, it gets worse. She cheated on me in our hotel room and then when I walked in on her -"

"You _walked in on her_?"

"She said, 'oh, I've been meaning to tell you for a while now'' - that she wanted to break up like two months ago and has just been sleeping with other guys because she, I don't know, decided that that was better than actually breaking up with me? She also managed to insult YouTube and imply that you and I are fucking."

Phil rolls his eyes, but with his back turned. Dan's having a rough day and can swear if he likes, "Why do girls always think that?"

"Dunno, mate." On the screen, the background behind Dan was slowly coalescing into the shapes of King's Cross. "I just want someone to like me."

"I like you."

Dan considers this, then says, "Maybe saying shit like that is why people think we're gay."

Phil bristles. He was just trying to be nice and, anyway, Dan started this with his Deep Conversations that he Knows Phil Hates. "Maybe telling the internet you like boys is why people think you're gay."

"At least I tell people instead pf letting the speculation..."

"What are you saying?" Phil snaps. He expects this from everyone else but not Dan, who knows more as roommate and business partner and best friend rolled into one. "Dan? Seriously, just because I don't have a parade of women through the flat..."

A flash of anger, and then Dan just rolls his eyes. Dan rolling his eyes should be trademarked. "Look, I'm getting on the tube now, so bye."

The way he says it, so brusque, makes Phil snap back, "I'll try not to gay up the place before you get here."

"Whatever, Phil." And the screen goes black.

Phil thinks about it for a long second, and then screams. There's no one else in the flat and their neighbors are used by now to their random exclamations so he screams just to hear what it sounds like. The problem with arguing with the one person who knows you, your best friend and roommate and business partner, is there's really no one else to complain to about them. So Phil just yells, and then eats the brownie batter off the spoon.

That, at least, distracts him. He's forgotten the vanilla extract, and the whole mixture is just slightly off without it. Not that he cares, really, about making it right for Dan, but at this point Phil could use some comfort food, too.

So he puts the Chinese in the oven to stay warm, shrugs on a coat and trudges down to the store, which is not that far but still far enough for Phil to stew. Why does everyone think he's gay? He likes to think that, were he to prefer men to women, or even like men just as much as women, that he would have added his voice to the soothing cacophony of _It Gets Better_ s, that he would tell people in the hopes that his truthfulness would lead to more truthfulness. But he's not gay, and apparently there's no way to prove that except by getting a girlfriend and showing her off to the world.

And that's the part that exhausts him. The idea of finding and keeping up with a girlfriend between their touring and book writing and channel juggling seems daunting to the extreme, and Phil's just _bad_ at it, much preferring pajamas to first dates so that when the opportunity arises he usually finds an excuse to back out anyway. Which was usually fine, except that Dan apparently thinks that Phil's gay.

He buys the vanilla extract, trudges back towards home. What does it matter what Dan thinks? Phil spent the sidewalk walk convincing himself that he didn't care about Dan's opinion. And then he opened the door to his building, propped it open to let one of the workers in (there always seemed to be workers, an upstairs apartment getting renovated, it was very loud and annoying) and trudged up the stairs, where he tried to admit that he _did_ care what Dan thought, that being a roommate and business parter and co-host and co-author and co- just about everything meant that Dan's insights were studied and astoundingly accurate, and it stung this bit of not-knowing, or not-listening, or not-understanding. It made Phil feel like this co-guy hadn't been paying attention.

He puts key in lock to find that it was already unlocked. Dan's too far away to have possibly got back before he him - Phil was gone less than ten minutes. More likely, Phil, in his state, had just forgotten to lock the door.

Phil sighs, rolls his eyes at himself, and pushes open the door to see his apartment being ransacked.

He stares at the two big men throwing their entire lives into duffle bags, his laptop and their television and the Pokémons from off the shelf, and they stare back at him, and for half a breath the whole world's suspended and Phil can only think, in that odd, traumatic train of thought, that Dan's going to kill him. Phil's notorious for leaving their front door unlocked.

And then one of the men steps forward and Phil tries to back out of the door he'd come through, but he's surprised and scared and isn't fast enough, definitely isn't faster than this man, who hits him and drags him into the flat and hits again and Phil knows no more.

.***.

Dan takes a detour into the store on his way home. He can't stomach facing Phil, knowing that he'll probably get a lecture or maybe nothing at all, as his older counterpart tends to sulk until Dan apologizes. Even though arguments take two, Dan ends up being the one apologizing a lot of the time. So he buys brownies instead, the ones in the tin covered in fudge that Phil likes, and prepares his opening speech, about how incredibly awful his weekend was, and how he's sorry, he was just looking for a fight, and how he knows, or thinks he knows, that Phil isn't gay.

It had been the weekend, and that girl. She'd asked him, before she'd cheated on him, if Phil was seeing anybody, any boy or girl, and Dan had had to admit that he just didn't know, that Phil was a private person in a strange way, so good at telling stories, so many meaningless stories, that you didn't even realize - Dan didn't realize - how little substance he knew about his friend. _Well,_ the girl had asked, _does he like boys or girls?_ She'd paused, given him a long, strange look, _or both?_

And Dan thought back on his many years, almost a decade worth of years, knowing Phil, and admitted he just didn't know.

But still the brownies, because it's really none of his business, and he was just looking for a fight, and it really, truly, deeply doesn't matter. He doesn't care one whit.

(okay, he cares just a little, but not about Phil being gay or straight, he cares that Phil doesn't tell him, when Dan tells Phil everything. all about the girls and the sex and the anxiety and the boys and the sex and the anxiety, and how had he not noticed that Phil would be kind and witty but never reciprocate? what was that about? did he not trust Dan in the way that Dan trusted Phil?)

So that's what he's thinking when he gets up to their floor (so. many. stairs.) and sees the door wide open, their stuff everywhere.

This is his first thought: that Phil's moving out, in a whirlwind of unhappiness he's packing up and leaving, and Dan's heart feels like a moon that he's swallowed and is bursting him from the inside out.

This is his second thought, once he steps inside: that they've been robbed, after living in London for years and being so tall no one wants to mess with them and never getting robbed, it happened here, when Dan wasn't home for the excitement.

This is his third thought: oh fuck, oh God, where's Phil?

The apartment is so still that Dan's sure, he's quite sure, that their robbers aren't here. But Phil? "Phil?" he calls, and his voice sounds strange even to him, weirdly high, and he hopes with all of his heart that this is a prank, another jump-scare, that Phil got here a minute before him and decided to frighten the living daylights out of Dan.

"Phil?" he steps over broken glass and a glob of brown something and he sets the brownies on the counter, an automatic domestic action, as if this was another day. "Phil? Phil!"

And there he is: half in the hallway and half in the kitchen and bloody, blood everywhere, blood pouring down his face and in a pool on the tiles around his head and Dan crouches next to him, one palm out towards the body, the other hand lifted up to his face to stifle a moan. "Hey," Dan says, surprised that he could get that word out, surprised he's not just screaming because _oh god oh hell so much blood_. "Hey hey hey, shh." Dan pushes back Phil's hair, "Philly?"

Because his eyes are opening, thank god, lashes parting ever-so-slightly and Dan puts both hands to his mouth because he is going to cry now, this is been such a monumentally terrible day. "Phil? Grunt if you can hear me."

The grunt is more of a moan but it breaks Dan's heart and he scoops Phil off the floor and just hugs him in a way that they never do, they're not big huggers and they're British and they're men but _ohmygod_ Phil looks like death warmed over. And as Dan pulls him close Phil gasps.

"Oh god," Dan sits up straight. "I'm so sorry, Phil, I'm sorry."

He thought of broken ribs, of bruises he'd jostled, but Phil just shakes his head. "No, it's -" his voice is hoarse and strange, "did...did you hit me?"

Dan blinks at him. "What? No! I came in and - Christ, I'm calling the police."

"You don't have to..." Phil trying to sit upright and kept listing, looking so confused, and Dan could pinpoint the exact moment fear became replaced with anger because _fuck_ Phil is hurt, bad.

He dials with one hand, putting out the other to help Phil lean against the refrigerator. "Hey, you're okay," and then into the phone, "hello I need to report a robbery?" his voice going up at the end like it's a fucking question. "Yeah, I came home and my apartment is gone and my roommate is hurt. Yeah, beat up. An ambulance?" Dan gives Phil a quick, assessing look, "yeah. Yeah, I think he needs an ambulance. Yes, I'll be here," he rattles off the address, thank you, bye.

"'M okay," Phil mutters unconvincingly, the back of his head smearing the fridge red.

"I didn't hit you," Dan says, because that's one thing they need to get straight right now.

Phil squeezes his eyes shut, nods, "I just - we were fighting."

"Yeah."

"And I don't remember anything else."

"Well. We were robbed."

"I guessed." Phil lists to the side. Shakes his head. "I don't remember anything."

"Except us fighting." Dan tries to smile. "So me being an asshole always comes through?"

Phil shrugs and, bless him, tries to smile back. "I think they took my laptop."

"Good. Then we can track them I can beat the shit out of them."

Phil sighs, squeezing his eyes shit, crumpling like gravity's just now gotten too much to bear.

"Phil, you need to open your eyes, mate. Or I'll flick you." Dan doesn't flick him thought, just nudges him, so soft. "Hey."

Phil looks at him, his head feeling stuffed full and bursting. "Hey," he clears his throat, spits blood onto the tile. "How was your weekend, Danny?"

Dan presses his fist to his mouth, keeping one hand over Phil's heart to make sure it's still beating. "Pretty crap. Yours?"

He's so tired but this, this is better. Dan's here, so it'll be okay now. "Lonely. I can't sleep without someone else in the flat."

"I've noticed. But your life seems to have taken a nose dive for the worse since I got back."

"I like that you're here," Phil whispers, almost mouths, his voice going.

"What?"

"Don't leave."

"Phil, I'm not going anywhere. Phil. Phil!"

He's being jostled again, looks up to see Dan's face even though Dan's not here, he's miles away, stewing on the underground because they were fighting, one of those meaningless inevitable fights. "I'm not gay."

"I don't bloody care, Philly. Just keep your fucking eyes open."

"Don't leave," Phil says again. He looks over Dan's shoulder and sees the brownies he was working on smashed to the floor. And then he blinks, and he can't see anything, the world beyond Dan getting hazy and dark. Dan's hand is still on his heart and Phil grabs it. "Please don't leave."

"I'm right here!" Dan's squeezing so tight, rocking, _screaming._ He keeps looking over his shoulder as if he's expecting someone. "Don't you dare die on me. Why do people always die after fights?"

"I'm not mad at you."

"I'm not mad at you, either, I was never mad, it was just - Jesus, Phil, please."

"Don't leave," so much quieter now, tinged with fear, it can be okay, he thinks, because Dan's here, because Dan's holding him so hard.

"I'm right here," Dan says. "I'm right here. Phil don't you dare die!"

"Don't leave," Phil says again. Or at least he thinks he says it, as the darkness comes fast, faster, swallows all the light, all the world. Swallows Dan.

And then: silence.

.

.

 **this is the part where we should mention that we have no knowledge about these boys' sexualities beyond what they say on their channels, and the we don't want to take part in the fanatic speculation about their orientations. so...the whole story's pleasantly AU enough that if you ship phan or anyone else, we hope you enjoy this as an alternate version, anyway.**

 **also, this is a break from the pattern but it's what we wrote so oops 2016 again again has happened.**


	9. 2016 Take 4

_**Phil:** Does your character live with their best friend? Are you my best friend? _

_**Dan:** I mean, I kind of hate you. _

_**Phil:** Me and Janice down the shop have been getting pretty close. We've been bonding..._

 ** _Dan:_** _You and Janice? What do you do with Janice, Phil?_

 ** _Phil:_** _Janice is great! No, but Dan, you are my bffl._

 **2015** _  
_

 _.***._

He'd been caught in a Wikipedia loop until the birds started singing. He'd started on Liam Payne's page (as you do, at three in the morning, when you just have to know if he ever won a "sexiest man" contest) and clicked through to Comic Relief, ended up on Lesbian Vampire Killers, took a left onto Guantanamo Bay, and was lost. Which is what he was going to explain to Phil when he was asked why he slept in to eleven thirty.

Except: no Phil. Which was just fine by Dan. He poked his head into the lounge, then the kitchen, called Phil's name once, and decided to film a bit of an Internet Support Group video before Phil walked in the door. He usually didn't mind filming with the other man in the house, but sometimes just knowing Phil could be in the kitchen making coffee as he talked about whatever the hell he was talking about would send Dan into a fit of giggles that couldn't be conquered until Phil was well away. So he usually filmed the talking bits while Phil went to Starbucks, so he didn't laugh.

The usual routine. "Hello, internet," on from there. The inbox was so full that Dan was tempted to leave it entirely, check out Twitter, but once he clicked a few emails he got into the project, just scrolling at random, clicking on certain stories. Most were funny. Some were sad. Dan wondered, not for the first time, if there was anyone who was actually looking to him for advice, and what would happen if he inevitably screwed it up. He'd have to ask Phil, when they were up late and talking about nothing in particular, if he thought Dan had ever killed anyone with his bad advice.

Twelve. One. Two. Two-thirty, and Dan realized drinking on an empty stomach wasn't going to cut it (god, he was getting old. Eighteen-year-old Dan totally thought alcohol was a good substitute for breakfast.) "Phil?" Dan called.

He grabbed his phone, left on the counter strategically so it wouldn't buzz or chirp during a video, and just as he picked it up, a familiar name and face appeared on the screen. Deep breath. "Hello, Martyn."

"I probably sound like an old grandma or something," Phil's older brother said, taking a deep breath, "but...Phil's with you, right? And just forgot where he put his phone?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Is Phil with you?"

"No," Dan realized that the air of the house had that stale, still feeling, as if it hadn't been breathed in a while. "I think he went out."

Dan already knew that the eldest Lester didn't have the same aversion to swearing as his younger brother, but he didn't know those words could be used in that combination. He was mildly impressed. "I can find out where he is," Dan offered. "He probably got coffee with Cat or something. Did you check Twitter?" Almost as good as breadcrumbs, Twitter. "I'll just do that now," Dan said. "What d'you need him for?"

A long pause. Then: "Haven't you seen?"

But Dan had already hung up. His phone vibrating too hard in his hand. So many messages. First one he landed on: from Tyler Oakley. _Hey buddy, just making sure you guys are okay._ Similar texts from every American Dan had ever met. Twitter mentions from Hank Green. Ten messages from Louise _where the actual fuck are you guys?_

He called her first. "What's the deal?"

"You don't answer me for three hours and you ask me what my _deal_ is?" she raged. "I thought you guys were _dead_. I mean, god, I know you never go _outside_ but it was so damn close to your place that I -"

"Louise," Dan cut her off, "what are you talking about?"

"The earthquake. Two blocks from your place. Caved in the Starbucks and the tube station." Louise sounded out of breath. And then she paused. "You're with Phil, right?"

Dan didn't know, until that moment, that fear made you dizzy and sick. Not like stage fright before a performance, or the stomach flips when a plane hits turbulence. This hit him all over, all at once. Shaking. Chills. And a feeling in his throat, like his body was too tight. "I'm gonna call you back," Dan managed.

And then he put his phone down. It was about to fall out of his hand, between his shaking and its vibrating - Twitter and texts, Facebook messages, all asking the same thing. Are you okay? Are you okay? And, occasionally, Is Phil okay?

He punched in Phil's number as he turned on the television. He flipped channels between rings, not going far before landing on a station covering the earthquake. _Freak Quake Rocks London_ , and then, smaller _more than fifty confirmed dead_. Phil's phone rolled to voicemail. "Where are you?" Dan said. Pleaded. He wanted to scream. "Everyone's worried." He made himself hang up.

He fumbled along the counter for his phone, wallet, keys, and now that he knew what to listen for he could hear it, the ambulances and firetrucks, the screams from outside that so often interrupted his videos but now were louder, closer to home. And his fingers brushed against a sticky note.

They left them for each other, sometimes. Or, more specifically, Phil left them sometimes. _Buy milk next time you're out_ or _can you hang around this morning? I need some help with a video_ or, this one, _Good morning! Went for donuts and Starbucks._

And Starbucks.

Dan didn't know where he was going but he knew he needed to go. He shoved feet into shoes as he stared at his phone, willing Phil to call him back. He was still looking at the screen when he yanked open the door and ran right into someone who wrapped his arms around him. "Oh, good," Phil breathed, "I was worried about you."

After that, Dan had a bit of a cry, and yelled at Phil as the older boy just nodded. "I know," Phil said, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You weren't even supposed to see the note. I left ages ago, but my phone died even though I just charged it, I think there's a problem with the battery. But I didn't even mind, at first, because it's kind of nice you know, to just not have a phone, so I walked to the donuts and walked over to that other Starbucks and I ended up talking to the guy there for like fifteen minutes because did you know he watches your videos? And like, he recognized me but he's obsessed with you, so I got you a phone number and I was feeling realy proud of myself when I started walking home from the farther Starbucks and I was stopped about two blocks away because they wouldn't let me get near the house..."

"Okay," Dan said. He was still trying to calm down. He couldn't stop touching Phil, trying to make sure he was alive.

"...because of the earthquake, you know, unstable, only for residents. And I said that I am a resident but they said that I needed to prove it and _I_ didn't know how to prove so I said, look, can I just get my roommate on the phone and they said sure, so I called you, not with my phone, obviously, with the police guy's phone, but then you didn't pick up."

"My phone," Dan said. He was smiling, he couldn't stop smiling, couldn't stop rubbing Phil's hand like he was a fucking cat and Phil didn't seem to mind, just let him pet. "It's been blowing up. Everyone's worried about us. How the hell does Hank Green know where we live?"

"You invite him over every time he's in London," Phil smiled fondly and Dan's heart broke at the thought that this whole day could have gone in a much, much worse direction. "Anyway, one of our neighbors came by and vouched for me, but the police said that we're probably gonna have to leave for a couple days while they inspect for structural damage. Or something."

"Fine," Dan said, "fine."

"So I thought we'd stay with PJ."

"Cool, yeah."

Phil gave him a look. And then gave him a second look. And then, slowly, reached wrapped his arms around Dan, slotting his head between Dan's neck and shoulder. "Hey," Phil said, quietly, "are you okay?"

Dan choked out a laugh and started crying again. He hugged Phil back. And that's where they were when the police came in and told them they needed to vacate the premises.

Phil bargained for five minutes, to grab laptops and clothes, and Dan slipped over to the kitchen and grabbed the chocolate he'd been hiding on a back top shelf, because he needed chocolate. He slipped Phil a piece as they left the house, pressed their hands together, the chocolate between them like a promise, or a thank-you. "You sure you're okay?" Phil asked, again, unwrapping the chocolate.

Dan nodded. He was okay, now. It could be funny, now...or, not funny, the earthquake and the deaths, not funny but bearable with Phil at his side as always. Phil broke the chocolate in half and offered Dan the other piece, the gesture so sweet and automatic that Dan's heart broke, again, at the thought of losing this.

"When I called you," Phil said as they got to to the street, "from that police guy's phone, I knew you wouldn't pick up because you never pick up unknown numbers. But I still thought that maybe you were dead."

"Phil..."

"I know why you were worried," Phil pressed on, "because of that note, I know you thought that I...but I just wanted to say. You know. That it goes both ways."

He looked so awkward, facing the wreckage of their city, that Dan reached out and touched his arm. "Thanks," he said, squeezing.

Phil nodded once, quickly, watching the clean-up crew through unblinking eyes, hitching his laptop bag higher on his shoulder. "Should we call an uber then?"

"Oh yeah," Dan smacked himself in the face. People didn't think he actually did that but he did, and Phil rolled his eyes, "obviously we can't take the tube."

"Obviously."

"Can we walk it?" Dan looked at the congested street. "I don't fancy ringing for a car. It'll take ages."

"Walking will take at least three times as many ages," Phil pointed out. And Dan opened his mouth to retaliate, wanting more than anything to keep their banter going, but he was interrupted by a feeling underfoot. A rumble. A shudder.

The word taken up all around them, whispered and shouted. _Aftershocks. Aftershocks._

The next one threw Phil to the ground, Dan tumbling on top of him, elbow to face. "Ow," Phil muttered, shoving Dan away. And then another aftershock hit, rippling the ground as easily as water, and Phil curled his body on top of Dan's, knocking their foreheads together as debris crashed around them.

"Let me up!" Dan demanded. "Phil!"

But Phil could be strong when he wanted to, and he kept covering Dan, pinning him to the ground in the middle of the street outside their apartment as all around them people screamed and screamed.

And then: silence.

"How noble," Dan said, when the last of the aftershocks had died down. "Thank you for treating me like a child, Phil, we can get up now."

Except Phil was still covering him. Still protecting Dan's body with his. And when Dan went to shove him for a second time, he felt something like a raindrop fall on his neck.

"Phil?" Dan pushed out from under the big, limp body, hands shaking, knees shaking, every part shaking because _fuck_ what was going on? "Phil, hey, Phil..."

When he pushed over his friend's body, so heavy, so impossibly heavy, he stared at the face of his flatmate and friend and constant companion, at the face of the person who had just laid on top of him, and stopped breathing.

Surrounded by bricks and bits of fallen buildings Phil looked almost serene. Almost beautiful. Almost alive.

.

.

 **the seven people who have been reviewing this story (thank you, seven people, you are my favorite seven people) will prob notice that we've reordered all the chapters because yes 2016 is too good not to write.**


	10. 2016 Take 5

_**shercock-holmes:** Does anyone know Dan and Phil's address?_

 _ **danisnotonfire:** okay no offense but your stalking skills could do with a little more finesse_

 **seen on tumblr**

 _.***._

It starts when Dan grabs the mail and finds a fan letter. They get them, sometimes, from overzealous people who somehow find their address.

Dan opens this envelope, more bored than anything, and reads the printed [aper. HI DAN, like that, in all caps, Times New Roman font, I AM REALLY IMPRESSED BY YOUR VIDEOS BUT I NOTICE THAT YOU SWEAR A LOT WHICH OFFENDS PEOPLE LIKE ME. I JUST WANTED YOU TO KNOW THAT YOU'RE VERY BEAUTIFUL & YOU HAVE A BEAUTIFUL BODY. I JUST WISH YOU'D STOP SWEARING AS IT MAKES ME LIKE YOU A LOT LESS.

He reads the letter through, and then shows it to Phil, who's quiet for a long time, reading it once, twice, three times, Dan standing by, shifting from foot to foot. "I dunno why it seems so creepy," Dan muses when Phil's silent for too long, "I mean, obviously we've both gotten way worse online, but..."

"It's creepy because it was in our mailbox," Phil smooths out a bent corner of the letter, re-reading, "Holy crap," he says, finally, handing the letter back to Dan.

"What do I do?" Dan looks at the envelope, which just has three letters printed on it D-A-N in enormous block-letter handwriting that doesn't even give anything away.

"I guess," Phil says, sighing, "I guess there's nothing we can do. We'll just have to wait."

For the rest of the night, Dan tries to pinpoint what it was about Phil's sentiment that makes him feel so much better, as if the older man once again solved his problems. And then he realizes, as he was about to fall asleep, it's because Phil acted as if they're in this together. Nothing _we_ can do, he'd said. _We._ And Dan falls asleep surprisingly easily, knowing somebody else was on the case.

A week later over cereal Phil asks if he received another letter. And Dan doesn't want to tell him that there were five more, all stuffed in his desk drawer. HI DAN, they all begin, and got progressively worse. I WARNED YOU ABOUT SWEARING...I NOTICE YOU ALMOST NEVER GO OUTSIDE WITHOUT PHIL BUT SOMETIMES PHIL GOES OUTSIDE WITHOUT YOU...I WARNED YOU BEFORE ABOUT DOING THIS...YOU'RE TOO SEXY TO SWEAR I LOVE YOU.

Dan really does't plan on telling Phil, because he's scared and he doesn't want Phil to be scared, but over cereal Phil gets up and goes to his room and came back with an envelope with just four letters printed in enormous block letters P-H-I-L.

"How the fuck are they mad at you?" Dan says, his voice getting louder as he snatched the letter out of Phil's hands. "You never even swear!"

"Apparently," Phil's shifting uncomfortably, "Well. You can read it."

And so Dan does.

PHIL YOU ARE SO FUCKING GAY WHO ARE YOU EVEN KIDDING I DON'T KNOW HOW YOU CAN PRETEND TO BE A ROLE MODEL WHEN YOU'RE OBVIOUSLY IN LOVE WITH DAN WHO CAN NEVER LOVE YOU YOU SACK OF SHIT YOU DISGUST ME GO KILL YOURSELF.

"Phil," Dan says, quietly. Phil won't look at him, just looks at the couch and the anime paused on the tv. Dan nods, folds the envelope, pats Phil on the shoulder.

It feels like something shifts between them, and this situation is fucked up, Dan thinks, but somehow he and Phil are pulled even closer because of it. They go to the police, who are exceptionally uninterested. "They're not exactly directly threatening you," the police officer says, flipping through the letters. He gets to the one addressed to Phil and looks at Phil for too long, mouth pressing into a thin line at the sight of Phil's arm touching Dan's as they sweat in the chairs in the too-hot station, and Dan wants to scream. The officer invites them to write up a report. To call him if it escalates.

"If it escalates," Dan mutters as they walk home, "we could already be dead."

They don't go out as often. They promise each other to stop reading the letters, and when they can't, when they have to open them and stare at line after line of rambling, they go into each other's rooms and find the other person in the lounge or the study and let someone else in on how afraid they are. They decide not to tell their friends, and to definitely tell not their parents or the BBC. They wrap their fears around each other and hold on tight.

The first time it interferes with their lives is when they're doing another post-TATINOF interview. The guy asks to speak to them one-on-one, Dan alone with a stranger in a closed room, Phil far off down the hall, and Dan's breathing speeds up at the thought. He thinks, this is why people have people, why there's always teams that come in and say _don't talk about this._ In that moment he decides that he needs people, to send in ahead of time and say that they work as a team, Dan and Phil.

"Actually," Phil says, his voice the right amount of firm and chagrined, "I think it should be the both of us. We're funnier together, I swear."

And the guy shrugs, flips open his notepad right there, and when Phil looks at Dan with that questioning look, that small smile _did I do it right? is this okay?_ Dan nods and bumps their shoulders together, which is kind of becoming their _thank you_.

And then.

Dan hasn't gotten a letter in days and is smiling, actually feels good enough to record a video. He digs through Phil's box of props. "I thought we had a top hat somewhere?" he calls to Phil down the hall, moving aside boas and and a bowtie and masks of the Queen and Harry Styles.

"We do have the top hat," Phil says, voice exasperated and coming closer. He sticks his head in the room just as Dan pulls out the letters.

There's three of them, all addressed to D-A-N, and when Dan looks up he sees Phil flushing deeply.

"I"m sorry," Phil says without prompting, "I'm - they were freaking you out so much so I've just been going down and getting them in the morning. And I've been reading them, you know, to make sure it's not escalating or anything."

"And your letters?"

"They're in there, too," Phil admits.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Phil," Dan spits, and the way it comes out, all bent around the edges, harsh, makes the older man wince. "You're going behind my back? You think I need protecting from the big bad stalker?

"Yes!" Phil yells back.

The quiet in the room is so heavy that Dan can taste it. Phil's face is already contorting into an apology, and explanation, but Dan barrels over him. "Why can't you let me protect you for once?" he says, and makes an effort to lower his voice. "You're always doing the grown-up stuff around here. Let me take my fair share."

He expects Phil to relent, but instead Phil draws himself up so he's towering over Dan, looking fierce as a warrior. "No," he says. "You don't have to read the stupid letters. They're killing you. So let me take this bit."

"It's not a _bit_ , Phil. It _is_ scary. We have a scary-ass stalker and the police are waiting until they murder us in our beds to do anything about it!"

"This is why I take them," Phil says, almost pleading, brushing a hand over his eyes as he sits in front of Dan, knees drawn up to chest. "They don't scare me. The idea of a stalker doesn't scare me. _You_ scare me."

Dan reels back as if slapped and feels like he's being crushed by the silence, like there's books being stacked inside of him, one heavy volume after another, and oh god, it's killing him.

A hand on his shoulder, and Phil's eyes, so sad, but with the spark of recognition. He's won this argument. He puts a hand on Dan's shoulder. "Breathe."

"Fuck off," Dan hisses, jerking away. He always gets like this, an angry viper curling in on himself, a dog snapping over an injured paw. Tightly wound and animalistic.

But Phil stays, his hand rubbing soothing circles on Dan's shoulder. They're not touchy kinds of guys, and Dan's more likely to reach out than Phil, but there's a long-standing protocol for this, if they can remember it. Phil doesn't bother to keep telling Dan to breathe, a tactic that's more likely to get him worked up. He just says, quietly, "you've been so happy. Since before we started the book. I didn't know if I remembered how to help. And you were getting so worked up over the letters. And they really don't bother me."

Dan dropped his head until his mouth was below his heart, so frustrated that he couldn't speak that he was nearly crying. Phil's hand moved until it rested between his shoulder blades. They must look a sight, Dan red-faced and gasping, Phil pale and worried, surrounded by neckties and crazy shirts and masks and a rubber chicken, as if this were a comedy.

It takes him a little while to get enough air to breathe, which is probably a good thing because he can't say the first five things that come to mind. He can't say he wishes Phil was more worried, because then Dan would be a little less alone. He can't say that he wants Phil to be more bothered, because it bothers Dan to see someone take shots at his older friend and get away with it. So instead when he can finally speak he says, "I'm still going to worry about you."

"I would hope so," Phil says, smiling just a little. It didn't reach his eyes.

"You need to let me see the letters."

Phil looks like he wants to protest, but ends up nodding. Dan reaches for one addressed to Phil first, and the older man winces. "You read mine, I read yours," Dan points out, taking out the letter. Times New Roman. All caps.

YOU NEED TO MOVE OUT PHIL DAN IS MINE AND YOU'VE BEEN HOGGING HIM FOR YEARS YOU'RE DISGUSTING IF YOU DON'T LEAVE I'LL KILL YOU I'LL STAB YOU I'LL RIP YOUR THROAT OUT.

His hand's shaking when he opens the next one. EVERYONE KNOWS YOU JUST LIVE WITH DAN TO LEECH OFF HIS SUBSCRIBERS YOU COULD NEVER BE AS POPULAR AS DAN YOU UGLY WHORE IF YOU DON'T KILL YOURSELF I'LL DO IT FOR YOU.

"Fuck," Dan says. "Fuck. We have to tell someone about this."

"Because that helped so much last time." Phil picked at Dan's letters. "You wanna read these ones?"

Dan does. The language is so different in these. Still creepy, but it's: YOU'VE GOT SUCH A BEAUTIFUL BODY YOU SHOULD TAKE OFF YOUR SHIRT MORE...I STILL DON'T LIKE THAT YOU CURSE BUT I LOVE YOU ANYWAY...and sprinkled throughout the same YOU SHOULD LEAVE PHIL...HE'S HOLDING YOU BACK...YOU CAN DO BETTER.

"Fuck," Dan says again.

Phil nods to one letter that he hadn't opened. "I was thinking about taking that to the police. See if they can dust for prints."

"You've been watching too much _Criminal Minds_ ," Dan says, and his voice is imbued with so much fondness it breaks in the middle. And he needs to add, as Phil picks himself up off the floor, "you know I need you here with me."

"Don't worry about it," Phil says. "You need help with your video?"

"Just this one shot - okay, four shots. But we can do it later."

"Let's do it now," Phil says, reaching down a hand to help Dan up. "I'll order pizza. Aren't you starving?"

Here's a fact that Dan finds, taking out his phone while Phil orders two large pizzas. One in forty-five men are stalked in their lifetimes, which is the scariest thing Dan's ever heard. Until he scrolls down just a little and sees that one in twelve women are stalked in their their lifetimes. And that makes Dan freeze, because he probably couldn't name forty-five guys he really cares about but he can sure as hell name twelve girls. He also sees that men are four times more likely than women to be stalkers, which makes sense, Dan thinks, since women are also four times more likely to be stalked.

And he's looking at this website while he gets the actual top hat he was looking for and starts to work out what kind of shot he wants, and he just loses track of time, and loses track of Phil, and when he looks up the place has that stale, still feeling of no one around.

"Phil?" he calls. "Phil! Need you help here!"

Had he heard the bell ring? Maybe. And had Phil gone down to grab the food? Maybe. First Dan explored the rest of the apartment, calling for Phil, thinking first that this was a prank, that their day was going so well that Phil decided to play on Dan's fears and hide. And then...it was just fear.

He ran down the stairs, leaving the apartment door wide open, barefoot, calling ahead of him "Phil?" "Phil!"

And out onto the street where he saw the pizza delivery car but no pizza delivery driver, and no pizza, and no Phil, and all Dan could think was _no no no no no._ He knew he must look crazy, screaming and barefoot and wearing this strange t-shirt that Phil somehow had and he thought would be hilarious for the video. He ran one way down the street. Then the other.

Later he'd tell Cat about turning the corner and seeing the pizza guy, still wearing his hat and red polo, standing over Phil with a knife. And later, when PJ stared at him, incredulous and teary-eyed, and said _he could have killed you, too_ , Dan would only respond that he had to try, and so of course he ran into the alley and pushed the attacker/stalker away. He'd tell Martyn - not about the Phil gasped Dan's name, blood gushing out of his mouth, staining his teeth, running down his chin, not that, no brother needed to know that - but how the stalker/attacker had been a guy younger than Dan, face dotted with zits, and how he'd fucking smiled. And later he'd tell Louise, who stayed with him after the funeral, stayed with him for days and days because he couldn't bear the empty apartment, how the pizza delivery guy told Dan that he loved him, that he was doing Dan a favor, that Phil was just in the way. And he'd say how he heard Phil sob, and cough on the blood. And how the pizza guy had run right into the arms of the police, who had been called by a neighbor who heard the screams, but how that didn't matter, none of it mattered.

Because Dan couldn't tell anybody about how he pressed down on Phil's belly, squeezing between his fingers the slippery hot intestines, trying to force them back inside, and in that moment Phil was crying, and Dan was crying, of course, crying and screaming for _help, please, help,_ and Phil had lifted one arm and placed his hand on Dan's cheek, smearing blood **.**

They weren't touchy-feely guys, but Phil couldn't talk anymore, and later, when Dan was alone in the too-big apartment, when Dan finally moved out, when Dan got married and settled down, he never forgot about the warmth of Phil's hand, the blood smeared like a red reminder, and they weren't touchy-feely guys, but for the rest of his life Dan liked to think that Phil's last action really meant _Thank you. I_ _love you. Goodbye._

 **.**

 **.**

 **please don't stalk people irl. and if you feel like you're being stalked, or you feel unsafe, you probably are. call 9-1-1. police are generally more helpful than this fics make it out to be, we promise.**

 **also: massive thank yous to everyone who reviewed. seriously, we got more reviews on the last chapter than the previous five chapters combined, and it means a lot to us. we spend way too long on this fic.**

 **peace,**

 **us**


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